Julia Casasanto-Ferro

Julia Casasanto-Ferro, a senior researcher at AIR, has been conducting special education research and evaluations since joining AIR in 2007. Her experience has concentrated on multi-tiered systems of support, evidence-based practices, and universal design for learning. For the last ten years, Julia has worked on several OSEP-funded national technical assistance centers including the National Center on Response to Intervention, the National Center on Intensive Intervention, and the National Center on Systemic Implementation.

In her current position as the task leader for the National Center on Intensive Intervention’s Tools Charts, she manages the technical reviews of academic (reading/language arts and math) and behavior (social, emotional, and behavioral) screening and progress monitoring tools and interventions conducted by the Center’s technical review committees. This work comprises over 75 external reviewers having conducted over 500 reviews to date. Julia subsequently leads the dissemination of the review results through the development and maintenance of six tools charts—web-based charts synthesizing the technical rigor of the screening tools, progress monitoring tools, and intervention programs.

On a study funded by the National Center for Special Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences, Julia is the task leader for the development of a tool (Integrated MTSS Fidelity Rubric) for measuring school-level implementation of integrated academic and behavior multi-tiered systems of support. In addition, she is the qualitative data task lead for the external evaluation of the i3 Building Assets Reducing Risks (BARR) scale-up grant examining the impact of the model’s social and emotional supports on ninth-grade students’ academic and non-academic outcomes.