Ratledge is a senior research associate in MDRC’s Postsecondary Education policy area and leads MDRC’s rural higher education work. Her research focuses on community colleges, technical colleges, and open and broad-access institutions looking to implement and evaluate innovative programs to improve graduation rates. Her primary areas of focus are student support programs, developmental (remedial) education, and financial aid innovations, with a particular focus on the unique assets and needs of rural colleges and students. Most recently, she fundraised for and launched the randomized controlled trial of Montana 10, a multifaceted student support program serving seven Montana public institutions including small rural colleges. This study is part of MDRC’s federally funded National Rural Higher Education Research Center, which Ratledge is the project manager of. She has also served as the project manager for both the Detroit Promise Path Evaluation and the ASAP Demonstration in Ohio.
Since joining MDRC in 2012, Ratledge has written MDRC reports for several studies and regularly presents them at academic, practitioner, and policy conferences. She has published in The Hill, Higher Ed Dive, Spotlight on Poverty, and Community College Daily, and has been interviewed by PBS Wisconsin and the Rural Matters podcast as a rural higher education expert. She has also published peer-reviewed articles in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. Ratledge holds a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Brown University.