Research

As the Director of the Collaborative for Student Growth at NWEA, I spend the majority of my time managing a team of researchers and a portfolio of research projects. On this page, I describe the goals of the research in which I play a leading role. For more information about research across the Collaborative, please visit our website. 

The unifying goal of my research is to help policy-makers and educators make informed decisions about the design and implementation of educational policies and programs. My research focuses on better understanding determinants of persistent educational inequities and inequalities, as well as evaluating policies and programs aimed at mitigating these inequities and inequalities. Examples of current programs of work include:

Road to Recovery

In the wake of instructional challenges faced over the past two school years, districts across the country are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to aid with COVID recovery. Understanding which interventions work best for students, and how to best implement them, is critical as we collectively move forward. Researchers from CALDER at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the Center for Education Policy and Research (CEPR) at Harvard, and NWEA are partnering with a coalition of districts across the country to help determine which COVID recovery interventions are working (or not working) and why. We aim to maximize the potential of this research to practically inform each district’s recovery efforts, as well as offer insights to the larger field.