Laura Shankland is a senior technical assistance consultant at AIR. She has more than ten years of project management and education experience, overseeing the development of a range of resources for Grades K–12 educators. Shankland provides technical assistance, professional development, and communication support for AIR’s work with the Illinois 21st ...
A new guide prepared by experts from the American Institutes for Research (AIR), Mathematica Policy Research and Chesapeake Research Associates offers information and strategies to help states evaluate the success of education reform efforts they are conducting under funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). ...
Over the past three decades, charter schools have become the most popular form of school choice, especially in urban school districts. Using data from Florida, this study investigates the degree to which differences in teacher quality explain the effectiveness of charter schools.
Jonathan A. Simonetta is Vice President, International Development at AIR. As Vice President, he mentors researchers, oversees projects, monitors overall project performance, and leads business development for our International Development Division.
Are teachers working in charter schools more effective in improving student outcomes compared to teachers working in traditional public schools? In this blog post, Umut Özek, a principal researcher at AIR, describes a new study in which he and his fellow authors examined the disparities in teacher effectiveness between charter ...
For decades, the cocoa industry has been controversial for its use of child and forced labor. AIR is conducting research funded by the U.S. Department of Labor to develop indicators that will measure the progress of eliminating child labor and forced labor in the cocoa sector.
Following a school shooting in 2007, the City of Cleveland and its school district commissioned AIR to conduct a needs assessment and make recommendations for school improvement. In 2013, a follow-up assessment led by AIR and funded by the Cleveland Foundation was commissioned by the school district to guide continuous ...
Chad Duhon is a managing director at AIR whose work focuses on college and career readiness and success. He also has a variety of experiences managing projects and providing technical assistance.
Currently, Duhon serves as the deputy director for Monitoring Site Visits of Level 4 and Level 5 Schools in Massachusetts. ...
In September 2000, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a grant to AIR to conduct the National Longitudinal Evaluation of Comprehensive School Reform (NLECSR). The NLECSR is a quantitative and qualitative study of behavior, decisions, processes, and outcomes.
In April 2010, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) adopted regulations to formalize the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s approach to engaging with all schools to improve student performance. This impact study found that the disbursement of federal Title I School Improvement Grants in the ...