American Institutes for Research

Dr. George Bohrnstedt is a senior vice president and AIR Institute Fellow and a leading expert in measurement, statistical methods, education policy, and social psychology. His early work at AIR focused on leading or co-leading large-scale evaluations including the Congressionally-mandated evaluation of Trial State NAEP,  the California K-3 class size reduction initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates national small schools’ initiative, and the College Board’s Equity 2000 initiative.

Other research efforts he led focused on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as “The Nation’s Report Card.” In this regard, he was chair of the National Center for Education Statistics’ NAEP Validity Studies Panel (NVS) for 23 years, before stepping down in October 2018. While chairing NVS, he authored or co-authored numerous studies, as well as provided oversight for the research agenda for the entire panel. His current work is with the Education Statistics Services Institute Network (ESSIN), where he provides support to the research mission of ESSIN which includes mentoring, reviewing proposals, as well as contributing to several ESSIN research studies.

Trained as a sociologist with correlative emphasis in educational psychology, Dr. Bohrnstedt’s publications include books and journal articles on statistics for social data analysis, sociological methods, educational evaluation, social psychology, and social and educational measurement.

Dr. Bohrnstedt had a 20+ year career as an academic before joining AIR, including serving as chair of the Departments of Sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Indiana University-Bloomington. While an academic, he also chaired of the Section on Methodology for the American Sociological Association and was co-editor of their yearbook, Sociological Methodology. He was also co-editor of Sociological Methods and Research and the editor of Social Psychology Quarterly. He has been honored as a Belding Scholar at the Foundation for Child Development and has been a fellow at Stanford's Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences.