Nathan Jones

Sep 30

Professor, Boston University

Dr. Nathan Jones is a professor in the Special Education program and associate dean of research at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. He is affiliated faculty with the Wheelock Educational Policy Center (WEPC) and is a founding member of the BU Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. Previously, he served as Commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSERS) in the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES).

In his research, Dr. Jones focuses on the intersection of education policy and classroom teaching, particularly in special education. Much of this work has examined on the measurement of teachers’ work, including how to conceptualize and measure teaching effectiveness. In addition, Dr. Jones has leveraged state and district administrative datasets to explore pressing questions surrounding special education staffing policies, including whether students with disabilities have access to high-quality general education and special education teachers and whether staffing models such as co-teaching and the use of paraprofessionals lead to improved student outcomes. Finally, he studies how to improve the quality of teacher preparation, including how to ensure that general educators receive sufficient opportunities to learn and practice essential skills for supporting students with disabilities.

Dr. Jones’s research has been supported through grants from the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Education Sciences, the William T. Grant Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation, among others. His research has appeared in leading journals in special education, education policy, and measurement, including the Journal of Human Resources, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, AERA Open, Exceptional Children, Remedial and Special Education, and Educational Assessment.

In 2022, he served as a committee member for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science. He is currently working on a forthcoming book that will focus on teacher time use, arguing that time is at the root of many problems in schools, particularly those related to classroom instruction.

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K-12, Special education, Co-teaching

Service Delivery Models: Impacts for Students With and Without Disabilities

K-12, Special education, Co-teaching

This research study offers some of the field’s first causal evidence of how different service delivery models impact student achievement and behavior.

K-12, Special education, Co-teaching

K-12, Educator workforce, Special education, Teacher evaluation

Using Classroom Observations in the Evaluation of Special Education Teachers

K-12, Educator workforce, Special education, Teacher evaluation

Researchers find that Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching is limited in assessing the quality of instructional practices most valued in special education.

K-12, Educator workforce, Special education, Teacher evaluation

K-12, Educator workforce, COVID-19 impacts

Teacher Time Use and Affect During COVID-19

K-12, Educator workforce, COVID-19 impacts

Authors provide the most direct and detailed evidence yet of teachers’ work and affect before and immediately after spring 2020 school closures.

K-12, Educator workforce, COVID-19 impacts

K-12, Multilingual learners, Educator workforce, Professional development

Professional Development at Scale: The Causal Effect of Obtaining an SEI Endorsement Under Massachusetts’s RETELL Initiative

K-12, Multilingual learners, Educator workforce, Professional development

This project used longitudinal data from Massachusetts to measure the causal effect of a rigorous and time-intensive professional development (PD) delivered at a nearly unprecedented scale: teachers earning an endorsement in Structured English Immersion (SEI) under the Massachusett’s Rethinking Equity in the Teaching of English Language Learners (RETELL) initiative.

K-12, Multilingual learners, Educator workforce, Professional development

K-12, Special education, Co-teaching

Are Two Teachers Better than One? The Effect of Co-Teaching on Students with and without Disabilities

K-12, Special education, Co-teaching

Using longitudinal data for students and teachers in Massachusetts, researchers estimated the effect of co-teaching within a large public school system.

K-12, Special education, Co-teaching

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