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Martha Abele Mac Iver

Principal Investigator and Researcher

Martha Abele Mac Iver, Ph.D. has been a Research Scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University since 1998.

A political scientist who made the transition into educational policy research after more than a decade of research on both the Northern Ireland conflict and the political transformation of Europe after 1989, Associate Professor Martha Abele Mac Iver has focused her recent research on early-warning indicators and the effectiveness of numerous school and district educational interventions designed to improve student achievement. She is currently leading two IES-funded studies, one to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of professional development equipping high school teachers to increase student motivation in order to successfully earn all required course credits, and the other on continuous improvement of family engagement efforts focused on improving student outcomes in the transition to high school. She is also collaborating on an IES-funded efficacy study of an intervention for ninth graders in 41 high schools.

From 2012 – 2015 she led a three-year external evaluation for an Investment in Innovations (i3) development project (summer school STEM program). She also led a study helping several Colorado districts understand the behavioral characteristics of their dropout populations in 2008-09, and held a senior urban research fellowship (2009 – 2011) from the Council of the Great City Schools to study dropout predictors in Baltimore.

From 2004 – 2007 she was a co-investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded study of the achievement effects of a decade of educational reforms in Philadelphia. She has also studied educational reform efforts in the Baltimore City public schools for the past two decades, and is a researcher with the Baltimore Education Research Consortium.  She is associate editor of the Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR).

Her articles and reports have focused on early warning indicators of dropout, as well as on the effectiveness of school and district educational interventions designed to improve student achievement (including comprehensive school reform efforts, university-school partnerships, dropout prevention/college readiness high school programs, after-school and summer programs, educational privatization, alternative certification, and other interventions). She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan.

New study highlights how trusting relationships provide the necessary foundation for academic success

New study highlights how trusting relationships provide the necessary foundation for academic success

Baltimore, MD – The Dynamics of City Year Interactions with Students and How They Contribute ...

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Helping high school teachers to effectively engage students: exploring the potential of a professional development series

Helping high school teachers to effectively engage students: exploring the potential of a professional development series

By Martha Abele Mac Iver, Douglas J. Mac Iver, and Emily Clark

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Improving how schools engage families during the crucial 9th-grade year

Improving how schools engage families during the crucial 9th-grade year

By Martha Abele Mac Iver, Joyce Epstein, and Steven B. Sheldon

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Continuous Improvement in High Schools: Helping More Students Succeed

Continuous Improvement in High Schools: Helping More Students Succeed

The newest publication by Martha Abele Mac Iver and Robert Balfanz, Continuous Improvement in High ...

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Implementation of an Early Warning Indicator and Intervention System

Implementation of an Early Warning Indicator and Intervention System

By Marcia H. Davis, Martha Abele Mac Iver, Robert W. Balfanz, Marc L. Stein, and ...

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Improving College Readiness for Historically Underserved Students: The Role of the District Office

Improving College Readiness for Historically Underserved Students: The Role of the District Office

Improving College Readiness for Historically Underserved Students: The Role of the District Office By Martha Abele ...

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Building A College Readiness Indicator System: Progress in the Dallas Independent School District

Building A College Readiness Indicator System: Progress in the Dallas Independent School District

The Dallas Independent School District has been one of the pioneers nationally in creating a ...

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Early Warning Indicators of High School Outcomes

Early Warning Indicators of High School Outcomes

A special issue of the Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (Vol 18(1) ...

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Predicting High School Outcomes in the Baltimore City Public Schools

Predicting High School Outcomes in the Baltimore City Public Schools

This study of high school outcomes in the Baltimore City Public Schools builds on substantial ...

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