Sarah Ryan

Postdoctoral Fellow

Education

Ph.D., Educational Leadership and Policy, University of California Riverside, 2012

M.S., School of Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2001

After CMART

Dr. Ryan completed her fellowship in August 2014 and is now a research associate with Education Development Corporation (EDC), in Boston, MA.

Research Interests and areas of Expertise

Postsecondary access and persistance

Achievement/opportunity gaps

Engish language learners

Underrepresented minorities and STEM eduation

Social capital theory

Education policy and politics

Selected Recent/Ongoing Work

Malcom, L., & Ryan, S. (2011, April). Racial inequality, wealth, and the college financing strategies of African Americans. Paper presentation at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Mitchell, D.E., Ream, R.K., Ryan, S., & Espinoza, J. (2012). Organizational strategies for addressing California’s educational achievement gap. In T. Timar & J. Maxwell-Jolly (Eds.), Narrowing the achievement gap: Perspectives and strategies for challenging times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Mitchell, D.E., & Ryan, S. Career technical, occupational and vocational education: A review of the professional and scholarly literature. Working paper.

Ream, R., Ryan, S., & Espinoza, J. (2012). Reframing the ecology of the "achievement gap": Why "no excuses" reforms have failed to narrow student group differences. In T. Timar & J. Maxwell-Jolly (Eds.), Narrowing the achievement gap: Perspectives and strategies for challenging times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Ream, R., Lewis, J., & Ryan, S. (2011, April). Can I trust you? Examining the quality of interpersonal relationships among Latino/a STEM undergraduates and their mentors. Paper presentation at the 2011 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ream, R.K., & Ryan, S. (forthcoming). Racial inequality: Achievement. In J. Ainsworth (Ed.) Sociology of Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Ryan, S. (submitted for publication). Ambitions in action: Investigating the college choice process among Latina/o youth who expect to complete a bachelor’s degree.

Ryan, S. (2012, September). Does the level of alignment between student college expectations and preparation mediate the influence of parent resources on college enrollment among Latino and non-Latino White students? Paper presentation at the 2012 Fall Conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC.

Ryan, S. (2012, February). Getting aligned: Why parent resources can smooth the path to college but alignment may keep students on course. Paper presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the Sociology of Education Association, Monterey, California.

Ryan, S., & Ream, R.K. (forthcoming). Education is a social process: Repairing the p-16 pipeline for Hispanic youth one relationship at a time. White Paper. Arlington, TX: The Center for K-16 Education Policy and Research.

Ryan, S., & Ream, R.K. (in progress). Investigating Latina/o college choice across generations. Paper submitted for presentation at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, California.

Selected Publications

Ryan, S. (2015). Ambitions in Action: Investigating College Enrollment Among Hispanic Youth Who Expect to Complete a Bachelor’s Degree. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, Online First, http://jhh.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/04/29/1538192715584191.abstract

Ream, R.K., & Ryan, S. (2013). Racial inequality: Achievement. In J. Ainsworth (Ed.), Sociology of Education. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Ream, R.K., Ryan, S., & Espinoza, J. (2012). Reframing the ecology of the "achievement gap": Why "no excuses" reforms have failed to narrow student group differences. In T. Timar & J. Maxwell-Jolly (Eds.), Narrowing the achievement gap: Perspectives and strategies for challenging times. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Ryan, S., & Ream, R.K. (2012). Education is a social process: Repairing the p-16 pipeline for Hispanic youth one relationship at a time [white paper]. Arlington, TX: The Center for K-16 Education Policy and Research.

Ream, R.K., Espinoza, J., & Ryan, S. (2009). The opportunity/achievement gap. In E.M. Anderman & L.H. Anderman (Eds.), Psychology of Classroom Learning: An Encyclopedia (pp. 657-654). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

Mitchell, D.E., Ream, R.K., Ryan, S., & Espinoza, J. (2008). Organizational strategies for addressing California’s educational achievement gap. Report to the State Department of Education P-16 Council. Davis, California: UC Davis Center for Applied Policy in Education (CAP-Ed).

Technical Reports

Mitchell, D.E., & Ryan, S. Career technical, occupational and vocational education: A review of the professional and scholarly literature. Report to the New Hope Foundation.

Invited Talks and Refereed Conference Proceedings

Ryan, S.M., Jones, V.C., Mitchell, D.E., & Okagaki, L. (2013, September). The No Child Left Behind and Education Sciences Reform Act Legislation: Then, Now, and What Next? Panel Discussion at the 2013 Fall Conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC.

Ryan, S., & Ream, R.K. (2013, April). Investigating Latina/o college choice across generations. Paper presentation at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, California.

Ryan, S., & Ream, R.K. (2013, March). Parent assets and aligned ambitions: Investigating Hispanic college choice across generations. Paper presentation at the 2013 annual conference of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ryan, S. (2012, November). Hispanic college choice: (How) does immigrant generation matter? Research Presentation, Education Brown Bag Speaker Series, RAND, Pittsburgh.

Ryan, S. (2012, October). What model could have predicted it? How a teacher from Wisconsin ended up in the statistics department (and a bit about what she's doing here. Research Presentation. Graduate Student Seminar Series, Carnegie Mellon University, Statistics Department.

Ryan, S. (2012, June). Assets, access, and alignment. Paper presentation at the 2012 Association for Institutional Research Annual Forum, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Ryan, S. (2012, April). (Mis)aligned ambitions? Parent resources, student alignment, and piecing together the puzzle of Latina/o postsecondary attainment. Paper presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mitchell, D.E., Ream, R.K., Ryan, S., & Espinoza, J. (2010, March). Organizational strategies for addressing California’s educational achievement gap. Hearing testimony given before the California State Senate Committee on Education, Subcommittee on Educational Governance and Accountability.

Hank, N., Sanchez, R., Guiberson, M., Ryan, S., Atherly, P., & Catlin, D. (2006, March). Using multicultural consultation and assessment teams to support pre-referral and assessment processes for cognitively and linguistically diverse students. Presentation at the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems Forum on Disproportionality, Scottsdale, Arizona.

Ryan, S. (2001, March). Factors Influencing the Success of Hmong Students in the American Education System. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the annual meeting of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, St. Louis, Missouri.

Projects

Secondary analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002): I focus comparatively on rates of postsecondary access and persistence among Latina/o and White student populations. As a part of this work, specific attention is directed at 1) building a more complete understanding of the intergenerational transmission of resources between parents and children during the college choice process, and 2) the development of more comprehensive measure of college readiness.

Measurement of youth social capital: In collaboration with Brian Junker (Carnegie Mellon University), I am trying to address some of the conceptual and measurement problems associated with linking social capital and educational outcomes among young people. We aim to quantify and assess the associations among different dimensions of youth social capital, as well as the extent to which these different dimensions coalesce to form an overall youth social capital scale, through the development and pilot-testing of a measurement tool. This work is situated within the context of college and career readiness.

Evaluation of comprehensive school change: I am working with researchers at RAND on a project in which we use multiple methods to evaluate the implementation and outcomes of a comprehensive school change initiative implemented over time in a large urban school district. These initiatives target teacher evaluation, school quality, and rates of high school completion and postsecondary enrollment among district students.

Evaluation of hybrid curricula in community colleges: I recently served as a research consultant on an evaluation study funded by the Gates Foundation aimed and understanding how the implementation of the Open Learning Initiative (http://oli.cmu.edu/) curricula, which combine online and face-to-face instruction, at the community college level is associated with student learning outcomes. My primary role in this research was the analysis of survey data using multilevel models and quasi-experimental techniques.

Contact Information

Sarah Ryan

EDC, Boston MA

sryan@edc.org

http://ltd.edc.org/people/sarah-ryan