Tamara Linkow

Tamara Linkow is a senior director at AIR. In this role, she provides direction and support across AIR’s portfolio of federal education evaluation studies. With over 15 years of experience in research and evaluation, she has led impact and descriptive studies that inform foundation, state, and federal decisions.

Her areas of emphasis include college access and success, school choice, and federal education policy. For the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES) National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, she has examined efforts to improve college affordability and increase success for students historically underrepresented in postsecondary education. She was the co-principal investigator on a set of rigorous studies about how changes to federal student aid policy affect student enrollment and persistence in college. She also studied potential improvements to prominent federal college access programs, Upward Bound and GEAR UP. She led two randomized controlled trials within these programs that examined how program changes could increase college enrollment and persistence for students from low-income households. Also, she directed the Impact Evaluation of the Success Boston Coaching Intervention, a longitudinal quasi-experimental study for the Boston Foundation to evaluate the effects of transition coaching as students enter college.

She also has experience evaluating K-12 education programs. For IES, Dr. Linkow is currently a senior leader on a descriptive policy study of the nation’s only publicly funded private school voucher program, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Previously, she contributed to evaluations of STEM summer programs, teacher preparation programs, high school reform efforts, and accountability policy. Before joining AIR, she was a principal associate and senior education account lead at Abt Associates.