Susan Therriault is an education researcher whose work straddles equity, K-12 school improvement, and policy. In this Q&A, she describes her career and her work with the COVID-19 Equity in Education project.
Personality phenotype has been associated with subsequent dementia in studies of older adults. This study used Project Talent data to examine whether personality during adolescence—a time when pre-clinical dementia pathology is unlikely to be present—confers risk for dementia in later life.
Project Talent is the largest, most comprehensive study of high school students ever conducted in the United States. Since its launch in 1960, researchers have continued to collect data on the original participants and now its data are helping AIR researchers study possible risk and protective factors of Alzheimer’s disease ...
New research finds that high school students’ personality traits may be linked to a heightened or lessened risk of death around 50 years later. These findings, published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, come from an in-depth analysis of AIR’s Project Talent, now in its 59th year. ...
AIR examines 16 successful applications from the Race to the Top District awards. Four trends mark grantees' efforts to implement teaching and learning innovations, including blended learning environments, individualized career readiness plans, and empowering stakeholders.
AIR and Turnaround for Children have authored two white papers to support districts who are applying for the Race to the Top – District (RTTD) competition. The two white papers provide guidelines for establishing foundational conditions as outlined by RTTD and for using a specific set of metrics to measure ...
Early warning systems offer a way to use available data to identify students at risk and drive targeted interventions that help them get back on track. This issue paper includes lessons learned from more than seven years of working with individual schools, school districts, and state education agencies as they ...
As the U.S. deals with the growing number of Americans living with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, a new study suggests that those at risk of developing dementia in later life could be identified in adolescence, giving them the opportunity to receive interventions to offset the risk.
In April 2010, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted regulations to formalize the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s approach to engaging with all schools to improve student performance. AIR conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of how some of the lowest-performing schools use School Redesign Grants (SRGs) ...
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has an ongoing commitment to improve support provided to all schools, with an emphasis on the lowest performing schools. This report summarizes findings from AIR’s qualitative analyses of turnaround practices that appear challenging for low-performing high schools, as well as promising practices ...