In loving memory of Roy O. Freedle - Obituary Baldwin Brothers

Obituary

Roy O. Freedle, Ph.D., age 90, passed away peacefully on December 25, 2023, in Palm Coast, Florida. Roy was a kind, thoughtful, and spiritual man of many talents. He made numerous personal and professional contributions throughout his life, most of which was spent in Lambertville, NJ. Freedle received his doctoral degree in experimental psychology from Columbia University in 1964 and his contributions continue to impact research and education today. He was especially passionate about creating his art, poetry, and music.

Dr. Freedle worked as a research psychologist for thirty-one years at Educational Testing Service (ETS). Freedle’s major research interests were in developing discourse theory to help evaluate, objectively, the quality of written products, such as student essays, and to analyze syntactic and semantic content of test items to increase our understanding of how test theory works empirically across multiethnic comparisons. After retiring from ETS, he continued his quest to raise and address important issues of test bias. In 2003, his article “Correcting the SAT’s Ethnic and Social-Class Bias: A Method for Reestimating SAT Scores” was published in Harvard Educational Review. His research and findings continue to be used in current research efforts to challenge racial bias in standardized testing.

Among his many contributions, he was proud to have co-authored (with W.S. Hall) Culture and Language: The Black-American Experience (Hemisphere-Wiley, 1975), coedited six volumes of essays dealing primarily with discourse processing, was the founding editor of the quarterly multidisciplinary research journal Discourse Processes, which he edited for nineteen years, and founding editor of a complementary sixty-five volume book series, Advances in Discourse Processing (Greenwood).

As an artist, Roy Freedle (aka Cato), co-founded two galleries: the Artists’ Gallery and the Riverrun Gallery in Lambertville, NJ. Over a thirty-year period, Roy participated in many local art exhibits in Lambertville and New Hope, PA. He was an active member of a local poetry group and wrote and performed numerous hymns for the organ.

Roy is survived by his beloved older sister, Joan, and her three children Laura (Jerry), Larry (Barbara), and Cindy (Lee). He was a grand uncle to six nieces and one nephew and five great nephews.

“When Tomorrow Starts Without Me” by David Romano is a poem that captured the essence of his faith. In part, it reads: [God] said, “This is eternity and all I’ve promised you–Today your life on earth is past, but here it starts anew.”