Jaylin Nesbitt is a Research Associate with the Assessment Research & Innovation (AR&I) team at WestEd. She serves as a research resource for the AR&I team through assistance on quantitative and qualitative analyses, data collection, design of educational research studies, literature reviews, and report development.
Prior to joining WestEd, Jaylin interned at an assessment company where she was selected to extend her master’s thesis research with their machine learning team. She conducted research on the relationship between African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and student written responses on reading and writing items on an English Language Arts (ELA) assessment. She used methods of Natural Language Processing to quantify the total amount of AAVE used in each student response and used methods of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to investigate whether use of AAVE was related to scores students received.
Jaylin holds a BS in psychology from Spelman College and an MA in quantitative psychology from James Madison University. She is interested in quantitative data analyses, and the research and development of culturally and linguistically reflective assessments to better represent the diversity of the U.S. K-12 education system.