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 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. Our 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 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, Virginia Enhancing Education Through Technology/ARRA Program, 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, 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.

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, Virginia Enhancing Education Through Technology/ARRA program, and Ohio Statewide Interactive Video Distance Learning Project. 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.

Namrata Mahajan, Ph.D. is an Arroyo Research Services Senior Associate. Mahajan is the lead analyst for the Washington GEAR-UP evaluation and the lead methodologist for the New York and Kentucky Migrant Education Program evaluations. Her research interests focus on culture, education, and group behaviors, and her work includes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research studies that focus on the experiences of minorities in education and group settings. Prior to joining Arroyo, Dr. Mahajan was a Project Manager for Cobblestone Applied Research and Evaluation Inc., where she managed large, multi-state randomized control trial and response to intervention evaluation studies examining the efficacy of textbooks and curricula under No Child Left Behind (content areas include mathematics, biology, and literature). She also managed several evaluations of Title V grants provided by the U.S. Department of Education to Hispanic Serving Institutions to evaluate STEM programs. In addition, Mahajan has experience with various First 5 California funded initiatives, including working as an external evaluator for the Kids Come First Community Clinic and researcher at Riverside County’s Department of Mental Health Research and Evaluation. She has conducted research and evaluations for universities, community organizations, and school systems on health services, immigration, and cognition. Mahajan routinely presents research and evaluation findings at national conferences, and has most recently published an article in the Encyclopedia of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, published by Sage. Dr. Mahajan holds a B.A. in Psychology and Social Behavior from U.C. Irvine, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied Social Psychology from Claremont Graduate University.

Brian Curry is an Arroyo Research Services Senior Associate. His work for Arroyo Research Services includes project development and leadership, program evaluation, strategic planning, and analysis of complex education policy issues for PK-20 education organizations. He served as a project lead for the Collier County Migrant Education Program Evaluation, and has been a contributor to projects that include the Texas Dropout Recovery Pilot Program Evaluation, Ohio Synchronous Interactive Video Distance Learning project, and Ohio Enhancing Education Through Technology evaluation. Curry helped secure more than $3.5 million in state and federal grants to support university/K-12 education services for the University of South Florida, where he also served as Director of the Regions III & IV NCLB Regional Technical Assistance Center and the federally funded PT3 TECH Initiative (Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology). He has worked as a Senior Policy Analyst for the SouthEastern Regional Education Lab (SERVE), the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), in Washington, DC, the Florida Department of Education, and for the Education Division of Arthur Andersen & Co (Andersen Consulting).

Mr. Curry has over 20 years working in education policy and evaluation at the national, state, regional and local levels and has consulted broadly on the planning, evaluation, analysis, and implementation of educational technology projects, education reform, and educational professional development. His recent clients include the Florida Department of Education, Milken Exchange on Educational Technology, Miami Museum of Science, South Florida Annenberg Challenge Grant, University of South Florida College of Education, Metiri Group, and the Florida Educational Technology Corporation. Specific projects include evaluation of principal training programs, evaluation of student technology training programs, grant project development, development of the Technology Global Profiling for Schools System, and review of technology in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Curry is a member of the Florida Educational Technology Corporation’s Board of Directors where he served as the 2004-2005 FETC Vice President.

Kristina LaVenia is an Arroyo Research Services Associate based in Florida. LaVenia is a lead analyst for our teacher value added modeling in Georgia, and contributes methodological and statistical analysis to our large-scale projects. LaVenia was a recipient of the Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Fellowship at Florida State University and the Florida Center for Reading Research, and brings strong experience as a former teacher and guidance counselor together with rigorous training in statistics and methodology. LaVenia is a reviewer for the What Works Clearinghouse, and has presented broadly on research methods and evaluation results. A former middle school guidance counselor, she also worked closely with Florida school principals as part of a randomized trial investigating the effects of professional development on principals’ knowledge of, and facility with implementing, Florida’s Next Generation Sunshine State Standards in math and science. LaVenia is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Leadership/Administration at Florida State University.