Ryan Research Consulting is led by Sarah Ryan, Ph.D.

Sarah began her career as a public school teacher, working with multilingual learners and students with disabilities in Wisconsin, Colorado and California. Since then, Sarah has sought out roles that bridge research, policy, and practice. She has worked closely with state and local education agencies across the nation to provide research expertise and technical assistance around research and data use. Her substantive expertise spans a range of critical issues from access to early learning, to content area instruction in the elementary and middle grades, to programs and policies that prepare high school-age youth for career and postsecondary learning. Her background in practice drives Sarah’s focus on partnering with policymakers and practitioners to build and use evidence that improves the experiences and outcomes of diverse learners, their schools, and their communities.

Simply put, we connect leaders in education to evidence that can improve student experiences and outcomes. We are particularly passionate about generating, making sense of, and applying evidence to local needs and conditions together with local partners.

Educational decisionmakers face a constant stream of new evidence about how to improve student experiences and outcomes. The sheer volume makes it challenging to keep up. Even more challenging is connecting all this evidence to local context.

Yet when research evidence is timely, interpretable, and adaptive to local context, it is a powerful tool for productive change. This transformative potential of “evidence done right” drives our passion for helping educational leaders find, generate, and use research in ways that value and respect local systems, conditions, and people.

From state education agencies to local school districts, and from research organizations to program and product developers, we work with a range of partners.