Marcelino Justo Zavaleta

Marcelino Justo Zavaleta is a research assistant in the Policy, Practice and Systems Change service area at the American Institutes for Research. Justo holds three years of research in education. At present, Justo is a team member on the Study of Higher Education Articulation Agreements Covering the Early Care and Education Workforce for which he supported the creation of interview and focus group protocols, along with other data collection tools. He is also a team member on the Center on Technology and Disability (CTD)–a national center funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)–for which he assists with technical assistance activities that include providing materials, tools, and resources to state and district leaders to build capacity and improve outcomes for students with disabilities. Before working at AIR, Justo was a research assistant for the Children’s Learning Institute at UTHealth. In those two years as a research assistant for CLI, Justo worked in multiple government-funded grants that focused on early childhood education. His responsibilities included: leading participant recruitment, holding the position of master behavior analysis coder, and leading observation and assessment training. Justo has extensive experience conducting home assessments child and parent in both English and Spanish. Justo has collaborated in research that deals with parent-child intervention where parents are given a mentor that teaches them strategies to help their preschool-age child in early language and literacy. Justo holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Texas A&M University. He is bilingual in English and Spanish.

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AIR Informs Episode #6: Meeting the Needs of Students with Disabilities During COVID-19

Remote learning requires adjustment for all students, but students with disabilities face additional challenges during the COVID-19 quarantine. In the latest episode of AIR Informs, Allison Gandhi, managing researcher and director of AIR’s special education practice area, describes some of these obstacles and shares strategies to help students make the most of this time.