Areas of Expertise
At-risk Populations in the Educational Setting
AIR conducts research and evaluation on individual, school, and community interventions for students who are at risk for poor school and community outcomes. Further, AIR provides consultation and technical assistance for developing and implementing such interventions. AIR’s approaches involve promotion, prevention, early intervention, dropout prevention, and treatment. They are strength-based and child- and youth-guided or driven.
Recent Reports
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Children’s Elementary School Outcomes After Participating in Family Literacy Programs
The First 5 LA Family Literacy Initiative is a comprehensive program to promote language and literacy development, parenting knowledge and skills, and economic self-sufficiency among low-income families in Los Angeles County. Findings from the eight-year evaluation of this Family Literacy Initiative have shown significant growth in language and literacy skills among children participating in these programs.
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National Disability Policy: A Progress Report
AIR contributed to the development of National Disability Policy: A Progress Report, released on October 31, 2011 by the National Council on Disability. This annual progress report describes the current state of people with disabilities in America.
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Texas Ninth Grade Transition and Intervention (TNGTI) Grant Program: January 2011 Evaluation Report
The Texas Ninth Grade Transition and Intervention Program was designed provide supports to academically at-risk students as they transition into high school. Targeted students attend a summer program prior to their freshman year and are connected with appropriate interventions, as needed, once the school year begins. The Texas Education Agency contracted with AIR to provide a formative and summative evaluation of the statewide initiative. The AIR team employed a qualitative case study design to track program implementation and a multilevel propensity score matching approach to examine program effectiveness.
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New York State Curriculum Audits
As an alternative to the specified sanctions under the 2002 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as the No Child Left Behind Act, for school districts that were cited as being in corrective action, the state of New York negotiated an audit of the written, taught, and tested curriculum for its districts in need of improvement. The audits conducted by AIR consist of a mixed method evaluation, including analysis of extant student performance data; district policy documents; classroom observations; and interviews and focus groups with teachers, principals, students, parents, and district officials.
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Milwaukee Public Schools Striving Readers Evaluation
As a part of the Striving Readers program supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Milwaukee Public Schools implemented the READ 180 program in five schools in an effort to provide targeted literacy supports to struggling students. AIR conducted a rigorous evaluation of this effort designed to measure the causal effect of the intervention as well as monitor fidelity to the program model. Evaluators employed a student-level experimental design in which eligible students were randomly assigned to participate in the READ 180 intervention or to take the courses they would have taken prior to the implementation of the intervention. The evaluation team tracked implementation fidelity through classroom observations, interviews, and surveys.
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Supplemental Educational Services in Texas
More than 100 supplemental educational services (SES) providers offer tutoring and support to as many as 180,000 students across 1,200 school districts in Texas. AIR and its partners conducted a comprehensive evaluation to provide the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and Education Service Center Region XIII with information about provider effectiveness as well as the effects of SES services on student performance in English language arts and mathematics.
