Bo Zhu

Senior Researcher

Bo Zhu's primary responsibilities include leading the design and implementation of program evaluations and research studies focused on educator development and mathematics and science education. Dr. Zhu serves as the principal investigator (PI) for the Regional Educational Laboratories West’s Mathematics and English Language Development project and was a co-PI for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Impact Evaluation of Pre-Service Teacher Research Experience with Selected California State University Campuses. 

Dr. Zhu has extensive experience in leading multi-year and multi-site studies that are funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and NSF. She serves as the project director (PD) for three IES-funded studies, including a Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial of Descubriendo la Lectura, a Multisite Replication Trial of a Scalable Student Mindset Intervention, and a Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial of the Second Step Middle School Program. In addition, she serves as the PD or co-PI on four evaluation studies of Education Innovation and Research grants. Dr. Zhu is a What Works Clearinghouse Certified Reviewer in Group Design (Standards Versions 4.0 and 4.1). 

Related Work
Elementary students working on science experiment with teacher
2025-11-01

Can AI Help Teachers Design Formative Assessments in Science Education? Evaluating the ADAPT-AI Tool

AIR has partnered with Washington State University to test the ADAPT-AI tool, a human-AI collaborative tool designed to help elementary science teachers create and use adaptive formative assessments.
2017-05-04

Impact of TNTP’s Teaching Fellows in Urban School Districts

04 May 2017
Urban school districts often rely on alternative teacher certification programs to help address ongoing demands for recruiting and hiring qualified teachers. These programs offer pathways into teaching outside of traditional university-based teacher education programs. This report summarizes a multi-year evaluation of the implementation and impacts of one of those programs, ...
2017-02-01

Characteristics and Postsecondary Pathways of Students Who Participate in Acceleration Programs in Minnesota

01 Feb 2017
Acceleration programs are academically challenging courses in which high school students can simultaneously earn credit toward a high school diploma and a postsecondary degree. The results of this study raise several considerations for educators and policymakers, including the potential importance of expanding opportunities for underrepresented students to enroll in acceleration ...
2016-07-19

Identifying Early Warning Indicators in Three Ohio School Districts

19 Jul 2016
A growing number of school districts are using early warning systems in their strategy for improving rates of student on-time graduation. The study used student-level data and a five-step process to identify the most accurate indicators of students’ failure to graduate from high school on time.
2016-05-01

A Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial of Descubriendo la Lectura (DLL)

There is a pressing need for Spanish-language early intervention programs for students at risk of literacy failure. The Descubriendo la Lectura offers one-on-one lessons in Spanish for a period of 12‒20 weeks to first-grade Spanish-speaking English learners struggling with reading and writing. The program extends the successful Reading Recovery approach ...
2015-10-07

Using the National Assessment of Educational Progress as an Indicator for College and Career Preparedness

07 Oct 2015
For the last several years, the National Assessment Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics have been exploring how the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Nation’s Report Card, can be used to assess the college and career readiness of America’s high school students. Researchers at AIR ...
Bo Zhang
Expertise
Education
District and School Improvement
Teacher Preparation and Performance

Ph.D., Educational Psychology, Purdue University; M.A., Education, International Education Policy, Harvard University; B.A., Broadcasting Journalism and B.A., Economics, Peking University

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