The Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five initiative supports states to create plans to facilitate collaboration and coordination among existing early childhood care and education programs. AIR has partnered with four states—California, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota—to support their work as they expand access to high-quality early childhood care and ...
Since its passage 50 years ago, Title I has embodied the nation’s enduring commitment to educational equity and opportunity. The recently passed Senate reauthorization continues the $14 billion appropriation for Title I— nearly a tenth of all school funding and a remarkable federal investment in educational equity. Yet, ultimately, argues ...
Researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and funders are increasingly aware of the powerful potential for summertime experiences and the need to design, implement, and continuously improve summertime experiences for all.
Since 1998, the Alabama Reading Initiative has captured the attention of many who are interested in reading and educational reform. This report is a descriptive study of the Initiative in secondary schools and how the secondary component of the Initiative fared, especially amid decreased state funding for education in Alabama ...
Margarita Olivera-Aguilar is a senior researcher at AIR. She has extensive experience developing and validating cognitive and social and emotional learning (SEL) assessments and applying quantitative research design and statistical methods (such as structural equation modeling and multilevel modeling). Her research interests include the measurement of cognitive and SEL skills, the ...
Johannes M. (Hans) Bos is a senior vice president and Institute Fellow at AIR. Dr. Bos is a nationally recognized expert in the conduct of randomized control trials in education and other areas of social policy research. Since 1992 he has conducted numerous evaluations and policy studies in education, child ...
The start of the 2020–21 academic year illustrated the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of school-aged students and their families, and has heightened the need to catalyze the systems that support them. AIR partnered with Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and the Partnership for ...
Over the last two decades, the expanded learning community has grown and developed, both in its day-to-day practice as well as in its knowledge of what works well. This article, written by Carol McElvain, a managing director at AIR, focuses on what the development of a robust program quality indicator ...
In this round-up of our 2023 highlights, we reflect on the lessons we’ve learned this year, focusing on how we live, how we learn, and how we can build better communities. We hope that each finding brings us one step closer to a better, more equitable world.
Cecilia Xuning Zhang is an interdisciplinary researcher with years of mixed-methods research experience and a wide breadth of content knowledge in the areas of Early Childhood Education (ECE) and Technology-Based Learning Supports. She has rich technical expertise in collecting and analyzing extant data to inform enrollment trends and population estimates, leading user ...