Education Week
Amy Rathbun
Managing Researcher
Amy H. Rathbun is a managing researcher at AIR. Dr. Rathbun currently serves as project director of the Annual Reports Program support task of the Education Statistics Support Institute Network, which provides specialized statistical support to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In this role, she oversees AIR’s efforts in the development, review, and publication of NCES compendia of statistical data publications including The Condition of Education and The Digest of Education Statistics. She also provided 12 years of support to NCES on two nationally representative studies: the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K), and the Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Rathbun led the planning and execution of over 40 ECLS data user training seminars and was responsible for ECLS instrument development and review, quality control review of data files and technical documentation, and technical assistance to data users.
Dr. Rathbun has co-authored analytical reports based on several NCES data sets, including Higher Education: Gaps in Access and Persistence Study, and From Kindergarten Through Third Grade: Children’s Beginning School Experiences. Rathbun received an AERA Dissertation Grant and an Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Early Education/Child Development SIG for her research on relationships between full-day kindergarten instructional environments and children’s gains in reading and academic engagement. Her research interests focus on relationships among child and family risk factors, classroom practices, and children’s educational outcomes. Prior to working at AIR, Rathbun was an elementary school teacher.