Assistant Research Scientist
Robin Tepper Jacob is a skillful evaluator of educational interventions with a special interest in how policies and programs can affect instructional quality and outcomes in elementary schools. She has extensive experience conducting evaluations of education reform initiatives, measuring educational outcomes, and analyzing student achievement and other outcome data. In addition to her substantive evaluation work, she is an expert in and publishes articles on evaluation methods. Much of her work focuses on strategically leveraging school reforms designed to maximize academic outcomes for children across all ethnic groups and income levels. Jacob joined the faculty of the School of Education and the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan in 2006. She is co-founder of the Education and Well-Being Program at ISR and a co-director of the School Reform and Beyond (SRB) initiative. She currently serves as co-principal investigator for several research endeavors centered on teaching and learning.
Before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, Jacob worked for Abt Associate Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she served as the deputy project director for the $25 million Reading First Impact Study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education. She was intimately involved in designing the study, developing survey and classroom observation instruments, and analyzing the data. While at Abt, Jacob also served as task leader and director on numerous other education evaluations.
Jacob is a graduate of Indiana University and received her PhD in public policy from the University of Chicago.