Ellen Schiller

Ellen Schiller, Ph.D., manager for the Disability Policy program in the Center for Education and Human Services at SRI International, has more than 30 years of experience in research and evaluation of education and social programs for children and adolescents at risk of poor performance in school, including children and youth with disabilities. Currently, she is co-principal investigator on two U.S. Department of Education studies involving a randomized trial: the Impact Evaluation of Response to Intervention Strategies and, under the Striving Readers program, the Impact Evaluation of Fusion Reading on Adolescents’ Reading Outcomes.

Previously, Schiller led the national study of state and local implementation of IDEA (SLIIDEA), reported on the state of practice for educating students with learning disabilities by using data from the Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS), conducted a policy analysis of secondary datasets on the identification and outcome trends of children receiving services under IDEA, and served as a special assistant in the Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education. In the latter position, she directed a portfolio of projects on research syntheses in special education that resulted in a book, Contemporary Special Education Research: Syntheses of the Knowledge Base on Critical Instructional Issues. Currently, she reviews research studies for the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and serves as a content expert on the review of research on learning disabilities.

Schiller has numerous publications on effective special education practices and programs, with a particular emphasis on school-based interventions for children and youth who struggle to learn to read. Her work has been published in Exceptional Children, Journal of Educational Psychology, Teaching Exceptional Children, and Reading Research Quarterly.

Schiller received her Ph.D. in special education from Arizona State University.