Jessica Heppen, a nationally recognized expert in education research, policy, and practice, is the president & CEO of AIR. Dr. Heppen been with AIR for 20 years and, in that time, has held several key roles during her tenure.
Higher levels of educational attainment are associated with outcomes such as full-time employment and higher pay for young adults. However, college attainment, student persistence through college, and borrowing varies by generation status. This brief examines background and educational characteristics, plans for college, postsecondary enrollment, and postsecondary completion patterns of first-generation ...
Through the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, the USDA provides support to low-income, food-deficit countries around the globe to reduce hunger and improve literacy and primary education, especially for girls. Since 2013, AIR has conducted over 25 evaluations of McGovern Dole Food for Education projects around ...
The college admissions scandal that broke in March 2019 drew attention to the lengths that a few people go to cheat or pay their children’s way into these colleges, and to the way colleges make decisions about who gets accepted. Alexandria Walton Radford, a managing researcher at AIR and director ...
Through AIR’s Scholars and Leaders Award – a part of AIR’s Equity Initiative – our team is excited to examine whether – and to what extent – structural inequities to access to education in a child’s own language impacts learning outcomes for children in India.
Dr. Mark Schneider, an AIR vice president and former Commissioner of the federal National Center for Education Statistics, testified on September 20 before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives and said the nation needs better ways to measure the quality of the education U.S. colleges and universities provide. ...
Teachers are a critical resource for children in refugee and emergency settings. Teacher quality is recognized as a primary driver of variation in student learning outcomes, particularly in refugee and emergency settings, but few studies have examined the factors that motivate or demotivate teachers in these contexts. AIR was contracted ...
This research brief, the first from the Back on Track study, compares educational outcomes through the second year of high school for students who took an online credit recovery course and those who took a face-to-face credit recovery course.
To counter socioeconomic and structural challenges in low- and middle-income countries, governments, development agencies, and nongovernmental organizations have invested in different types of women’s empowerment collectives (WECs), including economic self-help group programs and women’s groups practicing participatory learning and action. ...
A study looking at the short-term economic impact of federal dollars earmarked for university research finds that less than 20 percent is spent on faculty, with much of the funding used to purchase goods and services from small businesses nationwide. AIR economist Dr. Julia Lane, one of the lead authors, ...