Megan Austin

Megan Austin's primary responsibilities at AIR include designing, leading, and reporting on large-scale research and evaluation studies that examine the effects of education policies and programs. Her areas of content expertise include high school coursetaking, including advanced coursetaking opportunities, dual enrollment, and career and technical education (CTE); college and career readiness; and educational choice.

Dr. Austin has provided content and methodological leadership for several IES-funded studies related to college readiness and success, including as principal investigator (PI) of a study examining the effects of district academic acceleration policies on enrollment and success in advanced high school courses and conducting a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an automatic notification tool; PI of a systematic review and meta-analysis of nudge interventions for college access and success; quantitative lead of a study using RCT and regression discontinuity methods to examine the effects corequisite remediation in Texas community colleges; and content expert for a meta-analysis of the effects of college financial aid programs.

Dr. Austin has led work examining multiple types of school choice, including charter schools and systems, intradistrict choice, and private school vouchers. As the Task 6 (Applied Research) lead for REL Southeast at AIR, she led two studies for the Georgia Department of Education examining implementation and effects of district and school flexibility under Georgia’s Charter Systems Act. For REL Midwest, she was PI of a study examining high school and college success for students attending traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools with and without vouchers in Indiana. She built a partnership with IDEA Public Schools in Texas that resulted in a $4 million EIR grant to the charter network to implement their Mathways to STEM Success program, with AIR as the evaluator. She also led the annual audit of District of Columbia Public Schools’ public school lottery system, and she has nearly 15 years of experience studying private school vouchers, with a focus on Indiana’s statewide voucher program.

Dr. Austin leads the annual research training institute for the IES-funded CTE Research Network 2.0, and she previously was co-PI of a REL Midwest study examining the characteristics and outcomes of CTE concentrators in Indiana and Minnesota.

Dr. Austin is a co-founder of MetaReviewer, a collaboration-focused software program for conducting evidence syntheses funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the AIR Opportunity Fund. She is PI of the current NSF grant supporting MetaReviewer’s ongoing development and was project director for the initial NSF-funded MetaReviewer development. She also is a What Works Clearinghouse Certified Reviewer in Group Design Standards (Version 5.0) and Regression Discontinuity Design (Version 4.0). Her research has been published in Sociology of Education, American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, AERA Open, Review of Educational Research, Education Finance and Policy, and several prominent edited volumes, including the Handbook of the Sociology of Education in the 21st Century, Handbook of Research on School Choice, and School Choice at the Crossroads, and has been covered in Education Week, U.S. News and World Report, EducationNext, and Psychology Today.