Melissa Hafner is a health policy researcher at AIR. Prior to joining AIR, she conducted health research at Mathematica Policy Research and the Massachusetts Medical Society. She also served as a senior program analyst in the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ...
Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, AIR conducted a descriptive study in San Francisco Unified School District and the Oakland Unified School District on the Weighted Student Funding policy, sometimes referred to as student-based funding, for the Regional Educational Laboratory-West.
Established by AIR nearly 20 years ago, the Center for Special Education Finance (CSEF) has assisted the federal government and many states in measuring special education costs and expenditures and in formulating fiscal policy.
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.
Dr. Louis Danielson, who has been director of the U.S. Department of Education's Research to Practice Division in the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) since 1993, has joined the American Institutes for Research (AIR) as a managing director. He will focus on special education policy and evaluation. ...
Education policy experts Laura Hamilton and Orrin Murray analyze scholarly information and historical context about DARPA, ARPA-E, and ARPA-H and apply that learning to education research and its contexts, with the goal of informing the design and implementation of a National Center for Advanced Development in Education. ...
In this video interview, Jill Yegian, co-director of AIR’s Health Policy and Research Group, talks about the challenges and opportunities in creating health insurance exchanges, virtual marketplaces where consumers and small business can comparison shop for affordable health insurance.
Teacher shortages may be the most acute problem in special education. In this blog post, Lynn Holdheide and Jenny DeMonte explore the issue and ask, "What drives special education teachers out of that role? And how can we keep them?"
In California, the demand for full-day, full-year early care and education programs has grown over time due to changing family needs. The purpose of this policy brief is specifically to address the financing issues involved in providing full-day, full-year preschool programs.
The Ohio Department of Education recently awarded AIR a contract to identify and cost out best practices for providing services to students with disabilities. In addition to informing Ohio on how its special education funding policy might be improved, this work also relies on AIR’s technical assistance expertise to support ...