Jennifer L. Steele

Biography

Jennifer L. Steele is a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, where she studies teacher quality, school reform, and data-based decisionmaking in schools. Her research skills focus on quantitative analysis of secondary datasets, including experimental and quasi-experimental methods. Steele is currently studying changes in the distribution of effective teachers for the Gates Foundation's Intensive Partnership Sites evaluation, and she is adapting the What Works Clearinghouse review methodology for a meta-analysis of correctional education programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice. She recently led a multi-state study of veterans' access to education benefits on college campuses, as well as an examination of how states and districts are incorporating student performance into teacher evaluation systems, a project to develop educational technology usage indicators for the Lenovo Corporation, and an examination of the impact of financial incentives on the distribution of academically talented teachers in California. She also recently co-led a U.S. Department of Education-funded study of the policies of charter and traditional schools in post-Katrina New Orleans. Her other projects have included estimating implementation effects for a randomized field trial of a computer-based mathematics curriculum. Steele's work has appeared in such publications as the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Teachers College Record, and The Future of Children. She received an Ed.D. and Ed.M. in administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard University.