Informing Education Policy with Rigorous, Empirical Research
The Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) is a joint project of the American Institutes for Research and scholars at 13 universities. CALDER aims to inform policy and research with objective, evidence-based insights that can contribute to a better, more equitable public education system.
CALDER’s commitment to high-quality, empirical research and objectivity makes it a trusted voice in important K12 policy debates. Our researchers and affiliated scholars are national experts on a range of critical issues—including educator labor markets, teacher education, and academic interventions. With data-sharing agreements in over 10 states, CALDER leverages statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDS) to develop systematic, quantitative evidence on how teachers and schools impact student learning and success.
CALDER’s work is supported by public and private grants. Past and present funders include the Institute of Education Sciences, Arnold Ventures, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Gates Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.
CALDER's History
CALDER was founded in 2006 as a National Research and Development Center (NRDC) under the leadership of Jane Hannaway. CALDER’s origins coincided with the first round of the National Center for Education Statistics' Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grants. These grants provided states with resources to develop their K12 data systems and to connect them with data from other state agencies (e.g., early learning, postsecondary, and workforce data). CALDER’s founding mission was to use these new data systems to conduct groundbreaking research.
CALDER started by working with data from Florida, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington state. From the beginning, our work has paid special attention to teacher effectiveness and the teacher labor market. Because CALDER works in multiple states, we can examine how problems and solutions vary across different contexts. The cross-state nature of our work has reinforced some findings across contexts (e.g., how status quo layoff policies interact with teacher quality) and revealed nuance and differences on others (e.g., how inequitable access to quality teachers can be driven by within-district gaps in some states and between-district gaps in others).
In 2012, CALDER secured a second 5-year grant from the Department of Education (ED). In 2014, CALDER’s leadership transitioned to Dan Goldhaber, who had previously led CALDER’s work in Washington state. In its second wave of work, CALDER continued to examine how teachers and teacher policy influence student outcomes in K12. As more states connected their K12 and postsecondary data system, we also began studying outcomes beyond K12. Besides the original six CALDER states, the Center also began working with data in the District of Columbia and Massachusetts.
After its first two ED funding cycles, CALDER continued to sustain and grow its research agenda with support from private foundations as well as project-specific grants from the federal government (e.g., from the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation).
In 2024, CALDER secured a third 5-year grant from ED under the Education Research and Development Center Program to study K12 Teacher Recruitment and Retention Policy. Called CALDER Recruitment & Retention (CALDER R&R), the next iteration of CALDER will study 13 interventions across 10 states that address underlying, interrelated workforce issues at multiple stages of the teacher pipeline.
Today, CALDER has a core team of Ph.D. level researchers at AIR. CALDER’s affiliates include scholars at 13 universities. Over the years, CALDER has also developed several junior scholars who have since taken leadership positions in other high-profile organizations, including the Brookings Institution, Council of Economic Advisers, and the RAND Corporation.
When it was founded, CALDER’s special advantage was its ability to conduct novel and relevant research using SLDS data. That capacity continues to set us apart today, but our ongoing partnerships and engagement with leaders and practitioners in the field make the current version of CALDER even more relevant and influential. Our strong connections with policymakers inform our work and help build demand for evidence in government, advocacy, and philanthropy.