Jill Walston

Training, Coaching, and Technical Support Task Lead

About

Training, Coaching, and Technical Support Task Lead
Jill Walston, PhD, a principal researcher at AIR, serves as the REL Southwest task lead for training, coaching, and technical support. In this role, Walston oversees the planning, development, and facilitation of projects to build the capacity of education stakeholders to use data and research for continuous improvement. Walston has more than 20 years of experience in education research, quantitative analysis, and survey methodology, and has led projects related to early childhood education, college and career readiness, and educator effectiveness. In addition, she has led technical support and trainings for researchers and practitioners in research design, survey development, and data use, and has conducted more than 30 workshops and taught a quantitative research methods course at George Washington University and the University of Maryland. Walston holds a doctorate in education measurement, statistics, and evaluation from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Associated IES Content

About REL Southwest

resource Fact Sheet/Infographic/FAQ

Practical Measurement for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: A Toolkit for Educators

REL Southwest's toolkit, "Practical Measurement for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: A Toolkit for Educators," guides educators in developing and improving practical measurement instruments for use in networked improvement communities (NICs) and other education contexts in which principles of continuous improvement are in use. Continuous improvement includes distinct repeating processes: understanding the problem, identifying specific targets for improvement, determining the change to...

Oct 11, 2022

report Descriptive Study

Relationship between State Annual School Monitoring Indicators and Outcomes in Massachusetts Low-Performing Schools

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education supports low-performing schools through a process that draws on qualitative and quantitative data from monitoring visits. The data are used to produce ratings for 26 turnaround indicators in four turnaround practice areas relating to school leadership, instructional practices, student supports, and school climate. This study analyzed data on school indicator ratings collected during school years 2014/15-2018/19 from 91 low-per...

May 17, 2021

report Descriptive Study

Relationships between Schoolwide Instructional Observation Scores and Student Academic Achievement and Growth in Low-Performing Schools in Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, like other state education agencies and school districts, recognizes that the quality of instruction is a key lever to turning around low-performing schools. As part of annual monitoring of state-designated low-performing schools, the department's external monitors observe instruction in low-performing schools using Teachstone's Classroom Assessment Scoring System. The external monitors rate low-performing schools on three in...

Aug 01, 2020

report Descriptive Study

Graduation Exam Participation and Performance, Graduation Rates, and Advanced Coursetaking Following Changes in New Mexico Graduation Requirements, 2011-15

The New Mexico graduation rate has lagged behind the national graduation rate in recent years. In 2015 the graduation rate was 69 percent in New Mexico and 83 percent nationwide (New Mexico Public Education Department, 2016; U.S. Department of Education, 2017). Of particular interest to education leaders in New Mexico are differences in graduation rates among American Indian (63 percent in 2015), Hispanic (67 percent), and White students (74 percent). Improving graduation rates among all stud...

Oct 01, 2017

resource Other Resource

Workshop on Survey Methods in Education Research: Facilitator's guide and resources

This Workshop on Survey Methods in Education Research tool consists of a facilitator guide and workshop handouts. The toolkit is intended for use by state or district education leaders and others who want to conduct training on developing and administering surveys. The facilitator guide provides materials related to various phases of the survey development process, including planning a survey, borrowing from existing surveys, writing survey items, pretesting surveys, sampling, survey administ...

Apr 01, 2017

resource Other Resource

Strategies for estimating teacher supply and demand using student and teacher data

Every year the U.S. Department of Education reports for each state in the country the grade levels, subject areas, and geographic areas that have experienced teacher shortages (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, 2015). A teacher shortage occurs when the number of teachers available in a specific grade, subject matter or discipline classification, or geographic area--teacher supply--is less than the number of teachers required in that grade, subject matter or disc...

Dec 01, 2016