Yuan Zhang

Yuan Zhang is a senior researcher in the Education Statistics program at AIR. She has over five years of experience providing expert support for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) longitudinal studies branch, including data analyses for various NCES reports, such as the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (ECLS-K:2011) First Look; the Middle Grades Longitudinal Study of 2017–18 (MGLS:2017) Overview Technical Report; and tables for the Annual Reports using ECLS-K:2011 data. 

Dr. Zhang currently coordinates all activities on the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2023–24 (ECLS-K:2024) and assists in the development of cognitive assessments and survey instruments, field staff training materials, data files and documentation, reporting, and data user questions. 

With over ten years of experience analyzing national and international large-scale assessment and survey data, Dr. Zhang publishes articles in peer-reviewed journals and regularly presents research at national and international conferences on students’ cognitive development and academic growth, engagement, instruction, and teacher beliefs using statistical methods such as multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, and inverse probability treatment weighting.