The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Wraparound Zones (WAZ) Initiative is designed to create coordinated district systems that allow schools to proactively and systematically address the nonacademic needs of students. AIR conducted an evaluation of how well the WAZ Initiative achieved these goals, which found improvements in student ...
Researchers from AIR's CALDER, Harvard's Center for Education Policy and Research, and NWEA are partnering with a coalition of districts across the country to help determine which COVID recovery interventions are working (or not working), which students they are helping, and why.
In this commentary, Pooja Reddy Nakamura, an AIR senior researcher explores the question of when to introduce English to children in multilingual contexts. Rather than introducing it at the first opportunity, she suggests grouping classes by local language achievement skill—not just age—and introducing written English only after the local language ...
The Adult Education Research and Technical Assistance Center (AERTAC) at AIR conducts research and provides technical assistance to states and local programs to improve the adult education system.
The National Center for Healthy Safe Children offers resources, training, and technical assistance to support states, tribes, territories, and local communities as they promote overall wellbeing for students and their families.
English language learners often need additional support to read at grade level by the third grade—a milestone predictive of future educational and occupational success. Yet schools and communities often do not have the resources to provide those supports. AIR is conducting the feasibility phase of a Pay for Success project ...
What we know about how people make decisions can be a powerful tool for rethinking how public programs should work. AIR, as a sub to Mathematica, supported the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) work to explore how insights from behavioral science can be used to improve the ...
In this personal essay, AIR Principal Researcher Patricia Garcia-Arena shares her memories of being an English learner in preschool and elementary school—and how early literacy experiences can be better for ELs today, thanks to evidence-based instructional practices.
In partnership with Harvard University’s Project on Workforce and its initiative on Reimagining the Economy, the PROMISE Center is examining how community colleges across the country approach and succeed with workforce training.