An intensive content-focused professional development program improved fourth-grade teachers’ knowledge and some aspects of their instruction, but not their students’ achievement, according to a new study by AIR.
Elizabeth Spier is a principal researcher at AIR. She has over 20 years of experience designing and managing large-scale, policy-relevant studies examining the effectiveness of programs, and interventions designed to improve developmental and educational outcomes for children. Her expertise includes child development, safe and supportive learning environments, child and family ...
Although youth incarceration rates have declined in the past 20 years, African American and Latinx young people still experience disproportionately high rates of detainment and incarceration nationally and within San Francisco. San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families (DCYF) is committed to meeting the needs of the city’s ...
High-quality early care and education (ECE) provides an important foundation for young children’s success in school and in life. With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, AIR conducted a scan of efforts to improve access to quality ECE for low-income, minority families in other countries that might inform learning ...
Paula Dias is a qualitative senior researcher at AIR with over 10 years of research experience in the development sector. She has extensive experience in qualitative methods, including ethnography and participatory methods. At AIR, she leads and contributes to a variety of mixed-methods evaluations on the topics of social protection, ...
While there are many interventions aimed at boosting young children’s language and literacy skills, there are fewer aimed at improving math learning for young children, and even fewer that target children younger than preschool or kindergarten age. AIR and its partners developed the Math4Littles program to help parents and caregivers ...
Exclusionary school discipline policies once instituted to prevent serious infractions have crept into discipline practices for minor issues. Youth who participated in a roundtable on the subject contend that it limits opportunities to learn and compromises academic achievement; is applied disproportionately and subjectively; and deprives students of the ...
This spotlight takes a look at the history of Title I, how the program has changed over time, and how it affects children, schools, families and education policy. Experts weigh in on the program's past and future in interviews, briefs, and blogs.
The Guide for Reflecting on Instructional Depth, or GRID, helps teachers reflect on their instruction, identify areas where they can be more student-centered. The four-part video GRID series provides step-by-step guidance for determining students’ depth of mathematical justifications and who is driving those justifications. ...
An interim report on the implementation of an intensive teacher professional development program for seventh grade middle school mathematics teachers had a positive impact on the frequency with which the teachers engaged students in thinking activities, but found no statistically significant impact on teacher knowledge or student achievement. ...