Jenifer Harr-Robins

Jenifer J. Harr-Robins, a principal researcher at AIR, has extensive special education research and project management experience. She is co-director of the national Center on IDEA Fiscal Reporting (CIFR), which provides technical assistance to help states improve their capacity to report special education fiscal data. As deputy director, she completed an Institute of Education Sciences study conducted examining the inclusion of students with disabilities in school accountability systems and the use of school practices. She was the deputy director for a study reviewing the quality of education programs for students with disabilities in the District of Columbia and directed an annual court-mandated study to measure the delivery of special education services in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

In special education finance, Dr. Harr-Robins has played key roles in numerous evaluations of state special education funding formulas to devise alternatives to the current systems, including the California, District of Columbia, Georgia, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Dr. Harr-Robins was also the associate director of the Center for Special Education Finance/Special Education Expenditure Project (CSEF/SEEP), as well as co-editor for the Special Education Expenditure Project Report Series. She is co-author of two book chapters on special education finance.

In addition to special education, Dr. Harr-Robins has conducted school improvement research. She led a two-year comprehensive evaluation for the California Department of Education on the High Priority Schools Grant Program, a state intervention program targeting the lowest performing schools. She also served as a lead researcher for a U.S. Department of Education study on turnaround schools to identify successful strategies for improving student achievement, and was task leader for reporting the findings from the Impact of Teacher and Leader Performance Evaluation Systems study being conducted for the IES.