AIR is conducting a rigorous evaluation of Montessori preschool programs in public schools to understand differences in student outcomes and program costs compared to other preschool models.
Sarah Frazelle is the co-director of the National Student Attendance and Engagement Center (SEAC) and a senior researcher at AIR focusing on projects related to attendance and engagement. In her role at SEAC, she leads the AIR team in developing tools to help reduce chronic absenteeism through root cause analysis ...
Federal School Improvement Grants (SIGs) support turnaround efforts in the nation’s lowest-performing schools, including many that serve a large number of English Language Learner Students (ELLs). This evaluation brief examines 11 high-ELL SIG schools’ capacity and efforts to address the unique needs of ELLs. ...
Principals influence student learning by leading efforts to improve school climate; recruiting, retaining, and supporting effective teachers; and driving organizational change. Too often, however, states and districts focus on teachers rather than principals when planning for professional supports. This brief offers an easy to digest overview of current school leadership ...
Since 2007, the MTSS Center has been a national leader in supporting states, districts, and schools across the country in implementing tiered support systems that address students’ academic, behavioral, social, and emotional needs.
Response to intervention (RTI) is a multi-level prevention system to maximize student achievement and reduce behavioral problems. Dia Jackson describes the importance of implementing RTI with fidelity and how she provides coaching and professional development to schools so that they see gains in student achievement. ...
Jenny Scala is a managing director for AIR. Scala has managed AIR’s early warning system efforts since 2013 and participates in multiple projects using her expertise in using data to inform instructional decision-making across the nation. She currently oversees implementation of AIR’s early warning intervention and monitoring systems (EWIMS) mid-phase ...
Public pension systems in many U.S. states face large funding shortfalls. Movement toward defined contribution (DC) pension structures may reduce the likelihood of future shortfalls. We address some limitations of the existing literature by studying public-sector employees who are enrolled in either a defined benefit (DB) plan or hybrid DB-DC ...
Apprenticeship industry intermediaries work to increase awareness and adoption of apprenticeship programs in a targeted industry sector. Since 2020, AIR has been contracted by the U.S. Department of Labor as an industry intermediary to drive the creation of new apprenticeship programs with the goal to increase and diversify the tech ...
The Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, launched in 2011, offers a rich opportunity to study how a large-scale tuition-voucher program works and to analyze the results it has produced in its first few years. This article describes the results of a four-year study of the Indiana program.