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Senior Research Associate
Senior Research Associate John Flaherty, Jr., directs evaluation projects that ultimately provide policymakers and practitioners with the information they need to improve education services.
A member of WestEd's Evaluation Research Program, Flaherty's work ranges from large-scale national policy and program evaluations to local community-based projects, encompassing a variety of evaluation designs as well as content areas.
As a Project Manager, Flaherty is responsible for a myriad of tasks, from designing instruments and collecting and managing data, to analyzing, summarizing, and reporting research results. He has extensive experience using multiple data collection methods, and is especially experienced in case study methods and exploring and evaluating school reform efforts. He has conducted dozens of classroom observations over the past several years and has been trained and certified in the use of the National Science Foundation-approved classroom observation protocol, which was used to help evaluate more than 75 Local Systemic Change projects nationwide.
Flaherty currently directs the Evaluation of the First in Math© (FIM) Online Mathematics Program in New York City. This study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, uses a cluster-randomized design to measure the implementation and impact of FIM on 4th and 5th grade student achievement.
He also directs the Charter Schools Program Grant Award Database and the Transition to Teaching (TTT) Performance Report and Evaluation projects, both funded by the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. For these projects, Flaherty analyzes grantee performance reports and other data collected from state and local grantees to assess grantee performance and program effectiveness. As necessary, he also helps grantees gather and analyze data to improve implementation.
Flaherty also serves as the evaluator of The Early Success for Children's Achievement of Language and Early Reading Acquisition Program, which provides preschool-age children with the early literacy skills needed for a successful transition into kindergarten. Flaherty is evaluating the success of the program, which serves close to 200 impoverished children at risk of academic failure and who attend schools in the Newport-Mesa (CA) Unified School District.
An integral part of WestEd's early research into the charter school movement in California and nationwide, Flaherty co-wrote the WestEd report, Freedom and Innovation in California's Charter Schools. He also co-wrote California's Class Size Reduction: Implications for Equity, Practice, and Implementation, which evaluates California's first full year of its class size reduction effort and examines the implementation challenges schools have faced as they reduce class sizes.
Flaherty regularly presents research and evaluation studies and results at national conferences, including the American Evaluation Association and the American Educational Research Association. He is a member of the WestEd Staff Awards Committee, which coordinates the staff award nomination and selection processes. The Staff Awards Program recognizes the effort and excellence of WestEd employees, both as individuals and as teams based in single offices or spanning locations nationwide.
As a former ombudsperson for WestEd, Flaherty supported effective communication, cooperation, equity, and civility at WestEd through facilitating conflict resolution and mediation, and providing information on agency policy.
He received a BA in sociology and an MA in applied sociology from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
Tel: 562.799.5114
562.799.5151
Email: jflaher@wested.org
Mailing Address:
4665 Lampson Avenue
Los Alamitos, California 90720-5139
Resource Involvement:
California's Class Size Reduction: Implications for Equity, Practice, and Implementation
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