Susan Bowles Therriault

Susan Bowles Therriault is a managing researcher at AIR. She has conducted research and provided technical assistance in the field of education policy for over 15 years. Her work focuses on state policy, support for low-performing schools and high school turnaround.

Dr. Therriault has conducted research on state and district policy focused on systems of support for low performing schools, state implementation of Title I, charter schools, school and district leadership, and comprehensive school reform models for middle and high schools. Presently, she serves as a lead researcher on a federally funded, Study of School Turnaround which is a mixed methods analysis of the change process in elementary and high schools receiving federal Title I funds. She also is a co-director and lead qualitative research of an evaluation to study the implementation of expanded learning time in two Boston middle schools as part of a grant funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Last, she is the project director for the Massachusetts Early Warning Indicator System project focused on testing and validating indicators and developing a model that identifies students in kindergarten through twelfth grade who may be at risk of missing key educational benchmarks.

Dr. Therriault also provides technical assistance to states, districts, and schools. Dr. Therriault served a technical assistance liaison for the National High School Center at AIR, a federally funded content center that supports regions and states striving to improve high schools. As the liaison to five regions covering 22 states, Dr. Therriault provided real-time technical assistance by way of research syntheses, policy analysis and product development to regions and states focusing on support for low-performing high schools. Additionally, she has provided technical assistance through trainings, guides, tools and presentations to support state level policymakers focused on improving high schools; and the implementation of state, district, and school level early warning system aimed at early identification of students at-risk of dropping out of high school.

Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Therriault conducted and published research on the topics of state systems of support for low-performing schools, school choice, state capacity for education reform and school leadership as well as providing technical assistance to state education agencies and districts as the implement improvement initiatives. She currently serves as a member at-large of the Massachusetts School and District Accountability and Support Advisory Board.