Mary Kay Dugan is a managing technical assistant consultant at AIR. She is passionate about identifying evidence-based promising practices and translating them into policies and effective programs focused on underserved populations including disadvantaged youth and young adults. Dugan has over 30 years of experience helping federal, state, and local governments ...
People with disabilities are an important part of the workforce, but make 63 cents for every dollar earned by a person without a disability—and that gap rises as educational attainment increases. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020, the Institute for Educational Leadership and AIR led a discussion on the challenges that ...
One person's injury or illness can affect a community at all levels. The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury or Illness Network (RETAIN) project aims to increase employment retention and labor force participation of individuals who acquire, and/or are at risk of developing, disabilities that inhibit their ability to work. ...
On the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the 40th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 2015, AIR experts reflected on an era of research on the classroom and the workplace, their personal stories, and the future.
Caitlin Dawkins, a principal technical assistance consultant at AIR, helped to develop the concept of Second Chance Month, with colleagues at Prison Fellowship. In this Q&A, Dawkins explains why successful reentry is hard to measure and dispels some misconceptions around reentry.
The National Reentry Resource Center (operated by AIR from 2019-2023) supports the provision of a comprehensive response to the adults and juveniles who leave prisons, jails and juvenile residential facilities and return to their communities with support from the Second Chance Act.
When approached by a federal agency looking to improve service delivery experiences and outcomes for customers with disabilities, we discovered that while staff on the frontlines understood what the law required of them, they often struggled to put policy into practice when providing customer service. We provided assistance applying key ...
This series of monographs addresses the issues of youth with cognitive or behavioral disabilities and their experiences in the juvenile justice system. Staff in the system can better serve these children by receiving support in understanding these issues.
AIR developed a systematic, transparent, evidence-based protocol to review and translate the extant research about juvenile drug courts and related interventions into comprehensive, reasonable, actionable, understandable, and measurable guidelines.
The USAID-funded ENGAGE Project is introducing inclusive education for children with disabilities in Bagh, Pakistan. Twenty-five teachers in Bagh are participating in Pakistan's first project to introduce inclusive education training in a public school setting.