We believe our children and youth must be the leaders and innovators of tomorrow’s world. We are committed to helping our clients design, implement and evaluate the academic programs that will make this happen. We sift through the ever-increasing information flow to find what is important. We thrive on the challenge of performing rigorous, scientifically-based research in the real world of education.

Our multi-disciplinary team combines academic preparation with hands-on experience in a variety of educational and organizational settings, including schools, school districts, state departments of education, universities, government, foundations, and non-profit service organizations. Out team’s experience is our best asset. If we don’t have the knowledge you need, we’ll find it.

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 in leading and writing 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 Collier County Migrant Education Program (Florida), the simSchool online teacher training simulation, ETIPS Education Leadership Cases at the University of Virginia, and the online Masters in Education programs offered through Walden University. He also led the development and implementation of a Curriculum Management Plan for the Baltimore County Public Schools.

Vandersall currently leads the Effective Practices Team of the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers at Northeastern University, directs our NCLB evaluation technical assistance efforts for members of Florida’s East Coast Technical Assistance Center (ECTAC), and is the facilitator of the Florida Evaluation Working Group. 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.

Michelle Vruwink is founder and Director of Arroyo Research Services. Vruwink has extensive experience in public sector health policy leadership, private sector health policy consulting, and community based health and social services. Her experience includes program evaluation and work on school health policy and education funding with clients including universities, school districts, and state education agencies. She is currently leading a study of student outcomes produced by the Walden University Online Master of Arts in Nursing program, and is a project lead on the Texas Dropout Recovery Pilot Program evaluation. While you won’t often see her, Vruwink is behind-the-scenes in nearly all our projects and helps ensure work is done when it needs to be. She brings our projects the political insight and bureaucratic understanding gained from her years in New York City government.

Prior to ARS, Vruwink was Senior Consultant for Pacific Health Policy Group, where her clients included Wellpoint Health Networks, California Health Care Foundation, Sierra Health Services, and the states of Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia and Oklahoma. Vruwink was Acting Director of the Mayor’s Office of Medicaid Managed Care for the City of New York, where she managed a staff of 15 directing the largest program of its kind in the country. As a senior member of the Mayor's Office of Health Policy, she directed the city's Domestic Violence Prevention campaign. Vruwink also worked with HIV CARE Services for the Medical and Health Research Association of New York City overseeing community based organizations funded through the Ryan White Comprehensive Aids Resources Emergency Act. She started her career as “special assistant” to the director of Project Hospitality, a truly grassroots homeless services organization in New York City, where her duties included everything from shifts at the overnight men’s shelter to writing grants. She was with Project Hospitality during a phenomenal period of growth and as Director of Resource Development played a key role in procuring millions of dollars in federal and state funds for innovative multi-service program models. Vruwink received a Masters in Public Policy from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

Pamela Ellis is a Senior Associate for Arroyo Research Services. Ellis has over 20 years of progressive advancement serving as a researcher in the field of education and as a finance/operations executive in the private sector. She brings strong qualitative research skills and an ability to quickly connect with people. For ARS, Ellis has led site visits and survey efforts for the Texas Dropout Recovery Pilot Program and Ohio Enhancing Education Through Technology evaluations. She has also taken lead roles in the evaluation of an online education administrator development program at the University of Virginia, our work with the Baltimore County Public Schools, the evaluation of the Columbus Public Schools LACES Reading Program, and research design and consulting services for the Ohio Department of Education.

Prior to joining Arroyo Research Services, Ellis worked with the Center for Science Education at Education Development Center where she led evaluation design and analysis of secondary biomedical research programs, conducted research on teacher turnover and retention in urban school districts, proposed and won a $300,000, three-year evaluation project. She developed a cost model to estimate the financial impact of teacher turnover for a major urban district, based on the NCTAF framework and integrating findings from costs of turnover in the nursing profession.

Ellis’ other research and evaluation experience includes conducting a national study of science performance assessments, field research for an Ohio initiative to examine K-12 teacher quality, and consultation with secondary schools and postsecondary institutions on academic achievement, transitions, and retention issues for low-income youth. She has played a key role in shaping policy and program design for expanding the academic pipeline for low-income youth. She currently serves as an advisor to the Ohio Governor’s Closing the Achievement Gap Initiative as the state seeks to expand its programming to include additional student groups at high risk of dropping out of high school.

Ellis has taught courses in reading, teacher preparation, English as a Second Language, and accounting. Her research interests include teacher retention, teacher quality, K-12 STEM initiatives and cost-benefit analyses in education. She completed her Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University, focusing on qualitative and ethnographic methodologies with a minor in Cultural and Social Anthropology. She holds a B.A. in Linguistics from Stanford University, and an MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Raymond Barclay has recently joined ARS as a Senior Associate. Barclay brings a background in institutional research, assessment development, and program evaluation. Prior to joining ARS, he was Associate Vice-President/Director of Institutional Research for College of Charleston, Vice Chancellor for Institutional Research and Planning at Western Carolina University (one of the 16 University of North Carolina campuses), Director of Institutional Research and Assessment and at the College of New Jersey, Policy and Planning Analyst at Burlington County College (NJ), and Director of Research and Planning at The Bonner Foundation, a Princeton-based national private foundation that supports programs engaged in service-learning, civic engagement, student development, and community-based learning.

Barclay founded the Institute for Education Design, Evaluation & Assessment (IeDEA) as a partnership between the Office of Institutional Research and the School of Education at the College of New Jersey. Barclay also was an evaluator/researcher in support of the College of New Jersey’s Center for Math, Science, Technology, and Engineering which promotes the use of inquiry and design as the major pedagogical approach for students from kindergarten through the 12th grade. Grants secured and implemented through this center include the New Jersey Teacher Quality Enhancement Recruitment (TQE-R) project designed to address the need to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers in high poverty, low achieving schools and the Teachers as Leaders and Learners (TALL) Partnership with the goal of improving student learning and achievement in mathematics, science, technology and literacy through high quality, on-site and sustained teacher professional development for both in-service and pre-service teachers.

Barclay has served in key advisory roles on state-level education-related initiatives and has served as a principal investigator or co-investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation, Corporation for National Service, and Department of Education FIPSE grants in service to school improvement, student development, student access, and improving participation of women and minorities in the science, math, and engineering fields. He has taught psychological testing, psychology, and public policy courses. He completed his Ph.D. in educational psychology with a focus in learning and cognition, program evaluation, and measurement at Temple University. His research interests include cognition, problem solving, structural equation modeling, and survey development. He also holds an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, undertook academic work at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy, Princeton University, and holds a BA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania where he double majored in philosophy of science and minored in Anthropology.

Robert Kadel has also recently joined ARS as Senior Associate. Though officially new to the team, Kadel has partnered with ARS for a number of years, principally in Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) evaluations. He contributes excellent quantitative skills and a focus on education technology. Prior to joining ARS, Kadel served as Managing Director of Techinnoval, LLC, and was the principal of Kadel Research Consulting. Kadel has conducted evaluations of grants and programs in leadership and innovation, educational technology, special education, and after-school and community-support programs. Through Techinnoval and Kadel Research Consulting, he evaluated EETT grants, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, Comprehensive School Reform grants, and conducted multiple evaluations and research projects related to Title I (disadvantaged students) and Title II-D (educational technology) of the No Child Left Behind act and of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. Kadel served as the statewide evaluator of Ohio’s Enhancing Education Through Technology program from 2007-09. He previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Education at the Pennsylvania State University, conducted research for the American Cancer Society on finding effective means of disseminating cancer-prevention messages, and served as Director of Evaluation for the Center for Technology in Education at Johns Hopkins University.

Kadel’s professional presentations include sessions for the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, United Kingdom Evaluation Society, the American Sociological Association, and the American Evaluation Association. He is editor of the “Research Windows” column in the monthly Learning and Leading with Technology, published by the International Society for Technology in Education. Kadel holds a B.A. in economics from Eckerd College (St. Petersburg, Florida, USA), and M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia, USA).