Kirk Vandersall is founder and Managing Director of Arroyo Research Services and the point person for our strategic partnership with Truenorthlogic, providing professional development evaluation, assessment and research advisory services. Vandersall has over 20 years of experience leading evaluations and policy studies at the federal, state and local levels, and providing a range of professional services for education organizations. Examples of his work with ARS include directing evaluations of the Texas Dropout Recovery Pilot Program, one to one computing initiatives in Sunnyside, AZ and Huntsville, AL, Fort Wayne Community Schools Programs of Study, Learning Forward’ Transforming Professional Learning to Achieve Common Core Standards, Teachers Assisting Students to Excel in Mathematics (TASEL) Program (an NSF funded Math Science Partnership and PLC initiative of Garden Grove Unified School District in partnership with CSU Fullerton), Virginia Enhancing Education Through Technology/ARRA Program, the simSchool online teacher training simulation, ETIPS Education Leadership Cases at the University of Virginia, the online Masters in Education programs offered through Walden University, and multiple migrant education program evaluations including Collier County (Florida) and the states of Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi and New York. He also led the development and implementation of a Curriculum Management Plan for the Baltimore County Public Schools, led the Effective Practices Team of the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers at Northeastern University, and directed our NCLB evaluation technical assistance efforts for members of Florida’s East Coast Technical Assistance Center (ECTAC). He has served as Special Advisor to the APQC K-12 Professional Development Benchmarking Study and as a Subject Matter Expert for the APQC Evaluating Professional Learning Communities Study.
Vandersall specialized in state and local policy studies at the Howard Samuels State Management and Policy Center in New York City, where he led education policy studies throughout the country. Prior to forming Arroyo Research Services, Vandersall was a founding partner of Metiri Group, a national education technology consulting firm, where he was also Practice Leader for Metiri Group Research and Evaluation. For the Milken Family Foundation, Vandersall was research manager for studies of the Miami Dade County Public School System’s Instructional Technology Program, the development of an on-line assessment toolset for school technology programs for the Florida Education Technology Corporation, and the development of the instrumentation behind the on-line Professional Competency Assessment, an ISTE NETS-T aligned assessment of educator technology proficiency. Vandersall established an office of Assessment and Evaluation for a large urban school district in Los Angeles County, evaluated a major K-12 math and science initiative funded by the National Science Foundation, taught graduate-level policy analysis and evaluation, and has been a research and evaluation consultant for foundation, nonprofit and corporate projects in education, healthcare and urban policy.
Contact: kirk@arroyoresearchservices.com | 828-484-4385 x701