Kevin Junk is a TA Consultant at AIR. Junk has over 20 years of experience supporting school improvement in public education from rural, suburban, and urban districts. Currently, Junk is leading a project with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) through the Region 9 Comprehensive Center. This project consists ...
In this blog post, Matthew Soldner argues that, as Congress works on reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the need for far better research and access to federal student aid data should be high on its agenda.
Catherine Barbour is a credentialed School Turnaround Leader with a certificate from Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education. She successfully turned around three low-performing schools as a principal in urban, suburban, and rural districts.
The Minnesota Department of Education administers about 65 surveys a year. These surveys help gauge needs, gather feedback, inform programs and policy, and fulfill legislative requirements. The Midwest Comprehensive Center partnered with the department in 2015 and 2016 to build the agency’s capacity in survey methodology, enhance overall survey quality, ...
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.
Unprecedented interagency sharing of individual-level data has allowed the first in-depth assessment on the use and outcomes of the Post-9/11 GI Bill across all military branches. Experts from AIR conducted the study with researchers from the Census Bureau and the Veterans Administration’s National Center for Veterans Analysis & Statistics. ...
Kristina L. Zeiser is a principal researcher at AIR. Her primary research interests include the transition from high school to postsecondary education, academic outcomes among English language learners (ELL), and social disparities in educational outcomes and experiences. Throughout her graduate career at the Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Zeiser received training ...
The Ohio Department of Education wanted to assess the quality of the literacy instruction received by students in state-funded early learning and preschool programs and to provide teachers with information to improve their practice. AIR conducted more than 1,400 observations of early learning environments across the state using the Early ...
For decades, charter schools and district-run schools have been placed on opposing sides by advocates and policymakers. With support from the state and other partners, the Lawrence Public School District (LPS) state receiver brought these two seemingly opposing ideas together as a turnaround strategy for the district’s lowest performing schools. ...
AIR is available to assist states in their efforts to improve education for all their students under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and is committed to applying our expertise in educational programs to helping all students succeed.