Sarah Arden

Sarah V. Arden is a senior researcher at AIR in the area of special education. In this role, Dr. Arden acts as a service area coordinator and leads the intensive technical assistance efforts of the Office of Special Education (OSEP) funded National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII). Dr. Arden also serves as acting project director and implementation coordinator for a US Department of Education funded Investing in Innovation and Improvement development research grant (i3) investigating district-wide implementation of tiered systems in mathematics with a focus on intensive interventions for students with disabilities and other at-risk learners and as a senior recruiter on an Institutes of Education Science funded evaluation study of MTSS of reading in early grades.

In her previous roles at AIR, Dr. Arden acted as project director for multiple projects supporting schools and district implementation of RTI/MTSS and as a cross-state learning collaborative lead for OSEP funded National Center on Systemic Improvement.

Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Arden was an OSEP fellowship Scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. At UT Austin she was employed by the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk where she served in a variety of research roles conducting large scale randomized control trials investigating increased academic outcomes and the efficacy of RTI/MTSS and tiered interventions for students with learning disabilities. Dr. Arden previously worked at the California Department of Education as an educational diagnostician, as an elementary resource specialist in K-6th grade in the Clovis Unified School District in Central California, and as an adjunct professor in the special education department at the Kremen School of Education at California State University, Fresno. She has presented at many national and an international conferences and published various book chapters and peer-reviewed articles focused on high quality IEPs, special education services, RTI/MTSS of support, systems change and alignment, and improving outcomes for students with disabilities.