Richard P. Phelps grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, near Route 66 and the Frisco Route main line tracks. He received degrees from Washington, Indiana, and Harvard Universities and a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He taught secondary school mathematics in Burkina Faso, West Africa; was the first Coordinator of the World Education Indicators Programme at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris; has worked for ACT, the U.S. General Accounting Office, Westat, National Evaluation Systems, and Indiana's Education Department; and is editor and co-author of Correcting Fallacies about Educational and Psychological Testing (American Psychological Association, 2008), Defending Standardized Testing (Psychology Press, 2005); author of Standardized Testing Primer (Peter Lang, 2007) and Kill the Messenger (Transaction, 2003, 2005, 2008), and lead author for several statistical compendia.