Robert H. Meyer

Robert_Meyer
Robert H. Meyer
Emeritus Co-Founder and Emeritus Research Affiliate,
Education Analytics

Robert H. Meyer is emeritus co-founder and emeritus research affiliate alongside former chief executive officer and board president of Education Analytics, a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit that conducts statistical research to address complex challenges in public education. He is also an emeritus research professor at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was director of the Value-Added Research Center and a senior scientist at WCER. He was formerly an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris Graduate School of Public Policy. His research has focused on program evaluation, school and teacher effectiveness, and the statistical analysis of education policies, including evaluations of class-size reduction, literacy, and supplemental educational services. He received the 2010 UW–Madison Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research. Meyer earned a PhD in economics and policy from Harvard University.

updated 2025

Contributing topics
Supporting students’ social-emotional, mental & physical health
Understanding, measuring & improving student outcomes
Contributing initiatives
CORE-PACE Research Partnership
COVID-19 Recovery
Robert H. Meyer in the Media
: COVID-19 Impacts on Student Learning: Evidence from Interim Assessments in California
: Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?
: Measuring Students’ Social-Emotional Learning Among California’s CORE Districts: An IRT Modeling Approach
Publications by Robert H. Meyer
An IRT Mixture Model for Rating Scale Confusion Associated with Negatively Worded Items in Measures of Social-Emotional Learning
This paper uses mixture IRT models to evaluate whether students experience confusion due to negative wording of items on a social-emotional learning assessment. It examines the consequences of confusion on student- and school-level scores and…
Can We Measure Classroom Supports for Social-Emotional Learning?
This study uses value-added models to explore whether social-emotional learning (SEL) surveys can measure effective classroom-level supports for SEL. Results show that classrooms differ in their effect on students' growth in self-reported SEL,…
School Differences in Social–Emotional Learning Gains: Findings From the First Large-Scale Panel Survey of Students
School Differences in Social-Emotional Learning Gains
Findings From the First Large-Scale Panel Survey of Students
This article discusses the use of standardized tests as the primary tool for assessing school-level growth in student outcomes, despite the emerging importance of social-emotional learning (SEL). It presents results from large-scale surveys of…
Measuring School Contributions to Growth in Social-Emotional Learning
This report examines the stability of school effects on social-emotional learning (SEL) over two years in California's CORE districts. The correlations among school effects in the same grades across different years are positive but lower than those…