Michael Dahlin, PhD
Manager, Research Reporting & Data Analytics

Researcher Bio
Michael Dahlin leads NWEA's Reporting & Data Analytics team. He specializes in research and reporting on college readiness and school accountability policy. Before joining NWEA, he was a research analyst for the Oregon Department of Human Services. He holds a PhD in developmental psychology from Penn State.
Research by Michael Dahlin


Learning during COVID-19: Initial findings on students’ reading and math achievement and growth
These visualizations allow you to explore key questions from our report, Learning during COVID-19: Initial findings on students’ reading and math achievement and growth.
By: Megan Kuhfeld, Beth Tarasawa, Angela Johnson, Erik Ruzek, Karyn Lewis, Michael Dahlin, Dave Moyer
Topics: COVID-19 and schools, Equity


Achievement and growth tables for private schools
This interactive tool provides context on the typical patterns of achievement and growth in mathematics and reading for private and Catholic schools who take MAP Growth assessments. It provides multiple ways to examine patterns for different groups of students, including by student gender, race/ethnic group, region, and state.
By: Michael Dahlin, Art Katsapis
Topics: Empowering educators, Innovations in reporting & assessment


MAP Growth Goal Explorer User’s Guide
This user’s guide for the MAP Growth Goal Explorer describes how to use this interactive tool, the benchmarks it uses to provide context on student growth goals, a framework for goal setting, instructions for how to download information from the tool, and answers to frequently asked questions.
By: Michael Dahlin, Karyn Lewis, Dave Moyer, Nate Jensen
Topics: Empowering educators, COVID-19 and schools, Innovations in reporting & assessment


MAP Growth Goal Explorer
The MAP Growth Goal Explorer is designed to support and simplify the goal-setting process by showing a range of possible fall-to-spring growth goals against the backdrop of important academic benchmarks.
By: Michael Dahlin, Karyn Lewis, Dave Moyer, Nate Jensen
Topics: Empowering educators, COVID-19 and schools, Innovations in reporting & assessment


Do high flyers maintain their altitude? Performance trends of top students
In this study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, achievement trends from NWEA’s longitudinal growth database were used to track students who scored at or above the 90th percentile on this assessment in order to see if they maintained their high achievement.
By: Yun Xiang, Michael Dahlin, John Cronin, Robert Theaker, Sarah Durant
Topics: High-growth schools & practices, Equity


A level playing field: College readiness standards
This study examines the academic growth of 35,000 elementary and middle school students in 31 states—all of them high achievers within their own schools—over a three-year period.
By: Michael Dahlin, Beth Tarasawa
Topics: College & career readiness, Equity


Developing more meaningful definitions of college readiness
Complementing traditional quantitative measures with more qualitative tools can help determine college and career readiness.