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.
The USAID Bridge to Middle School Activity, led by FHI 360, aims to strengthen the Ministry of National Education's capacity to implement new, student-centered curricula in Arabic and selected science subjects, as well as English, in ways that lead to measurable impacts on learning outcomes.
Conducting research and providing technical assistance in developing countries has long been challenging and unpredictable. Here, experts from AIR and local staff in the field share learned lessons this year about creative solutions to research problems that they will carry with them when encountering future challenges. ...
The Child Friendly Schools (CFS) initiative in Nigeria was developed as a partnership between the Ministry of Education, UNICEF, and other national and international organizations in response to the dire state of education in Nigeria in the 1990s.
The launch of end-of-grade tests for about 1.7 million students in Honduras marks a major achievement for the nation’s education system, and the latest milestone for MIDEH (Improving the Impact of Student Development in Honduras). To celebrate and kick off the tests, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa and his cabinet visited ...
The Honduran education system, although free and compulsory for nine years, faces many uphill challenges. The MIDEH project supports the government of Honduras to improve education quality by building and sustaining national standards-based educational reform. Through a collaborative effort between USAID and the Secretariat of Education in Honduras, the project ...
In an era when advanced technology is a part of daily life, schools are tasked with preparing students to live in an increasingly computational world. The number of employment opportunities in technology occupations is growing steadily, and there are more jobs available than qualified applicants to fill those positions. This ...
The World Bank, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) designed a research program addressing how to improve education and learning outcomes for forcibly displaced populations and host communities facing poverty and other hardships. The World Bank contracted AIR ...
Corruption in higher education casts a shadow on many countries that are working towards more modern and progressive political and economic systems. In order to respond to these challenges, USAID created the program Ukrainian Standardized External Testing Initiative to address profound challenges in Ukraine’s higher education system, which acknowledged that ...
The Technology Literacy Challenge Fund (TLCF) was the first federal grants program to assist states in bringing educational technology into the nation’s elementary and secondary classrooms. This report describes the implementation of the TLCF program from 1997 through 2001 from the perspective of state technology coordinators, district technology coordinators, school ...