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Megan Kuhfeld is a senior research scientist at NWEA whose work focuses on understanding students’ trajectories of academic and social-emotional learning and the school and neighborhood influences that promote optimal growth. Dr. Kuhfeld’s work covers a range of topics, including longitudinal growth modeling, achievement gaps, and summer learning loss. It has been featured in Education Week, the Los Angeles Times, the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, and Applied Psychological Measurement. Prior to joining NWEA, Dr. Kuhfeld completed a PhD in quantitative methods in education and a master’s degree in statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation was funded by a grant from the American Educational Research Association and was the recipient of the 2017 Brenda Loyd Outstanding Dissertation Award from the National Council on Measurement in Education. She also worked at the non-profit policy institute Child Trends, the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and CRESST, where she provided psychometric support to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.