Tia Clinton

Dr. Tia Clinton is an Education Systems Researcher in the Human Services program at American Institutes for Research (AIR). Her primary responsibilities include conducting qualitative research surrounding issues of education equity, evaluation, and technical assistance work. Dr. Clinton has extensive experience in school level and nonprofit level interventions to increase achievement outcomes for students of color both on the K-12 and higher education levels. Her professional career has been grounded in the realms of race, education, equity, and social justice. Her most recent professional experiences include being Qualitative Lead for an equity audit for a Texas school district, co-developing a training on culturally responsive practices to be used by Regional Education Laboratory Midwest, and evaluating the effectiveness of the community partnership school model in Central Florida. Clinton’s dissertation work looks at the overlay of the black-white opportunity gap, the discipline gap, the school to prison pipeline and restorative practices. It interrogates the cultural and structural obstacles to implementing a whole school restorative approach and provides evidence that restorative practices has tremendous potential  to increase school belonging and socio-emotional learning. Dr Clinton holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, a certificate in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from the University of Michigan, a Masters in Sociology from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and American Studies from Wesleyan University.