Unterman joined MDRC in 2006 and is a senior research associate in the K-12 Education policy area. She has considerable experience leading experimental and quasi-experimental projects that focus on the implementation and effects of education interventions and reform efforts. Currently, Unterman serves as a lead investigator for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)–funded studies Using Longitudinal Data to Support State Education Policymaking, the Urban Assembly School Support Network in New York City research study (which follows high school students into postsecondary education and involves a close working relationship with the Urban Assembly program administrators), and the Career and Technology Education (CTE) programs in New York City; a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–funded study of Small Schools of Choice (SSC), focused on a New York City secondary school reform initiative, through which she has worked with colleagues to build a dataset following students from K-12 education into postsecondary school and the labor market; and an XQ Institute–funded study of XQ schools. She is also a co-principal investigator of an IES-funded survey for Boston Public Schools preschool programs, which has received three concurrent IES grants, and is working with the Massachusetts State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) to follow Boston prekindergarten students through high school and into postsecondary institutions. Unterman has authored publications in Child Development, JREE, and AERA Open, as well as a Brookings Institution policy blog post, as part of her work for Boston schools. As a member of the SSC project team, she coauthored two articles in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management and three MDRC publications, one of which earned the “Best Policy Brief/Paper in 2013” distinction from the Society for Research on Adolescence. Before joining MDRC, she worked as a social studies teacher in a Chicago public high school. Unterman holds an M.A. in education policy and management and a Ph.D. in quantitative policy analysis in education from Harvard University.
