Sarah Newman

Sarah Newman has nearly two decades of experience working at the intersection of U.S. education policy, information technology, and data science. She has extensive experience managing complex, large-scale education data projects and working across every phase of the federal data lifecycle. Newman currently provides consultation on data availability, utilization, and visualization to support research, evaluation, and assessment activities. She also assists with proposal development and contributes to AIR’s educational assessment portfolio.

Prior to joining AIR, she spent 13 years at the U.S. Department of Education where she was a go-to expert on K–12 education data. During her tenure, she created and led the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education’s data team, oversaw more than 100 data collections, managed nearly $4 million in data-management and analytics contracts, established the office’s inaugural Data Governance Board, and advised senior leaders on evidence-building, policy, strategic planning, audit resolution, and resource allocation.

Her federal experience also included directing the redesign of ED Data Express to expand public access to district- and school-level grant program data and leading the transition of reporting requirements from No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act. Across these roles, she collaborated with state educational agencies, program offices, legal counsel, statistical experts, and policy leaders; advised stakeholders on appropriate data use and interpretation; and delivered rapid analyses and geographic visualizations to inform decision-making. Through this experience, she developed a deep knowledge of state education data systems, state accountability systems and their interconnectedness as well as an expertise in translating technical information to non-technical audiences.