Monica Bhatt
Senior Research Director
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Monica P. Bhatt is the Senior Research Director at the University of Chicago Education Lab. In this role, Dr. Bhatt oversees a portfolio of over a dozen large-scale randomized controlled trials related to improving academic, behavioral, and mental health outcomes for Chicagoans. Her current work focuses on leading the Personalized Learning Initiative, understanding how we can scale the benefits of high-impact tutoring so that more students can benefit. She is the principal investigator on a number of high-profile studies, including individualized instructional interventions like high-dosage tutoring; alleviating mental health for young women; and READI Chicago, an initiative to reduce gun violence involvement among those at highest risk.
Prior to coming to the Education Lab, she worked as a researcher at the American Institutes for Research where she led projects related to college access and retention, teacher quality, school finance, and school accountability policy. Her academic interests include using data to drive equitable resource allocation and understanding the effects of systemic approaches to reduce disparities in educational attainment and achievement and violence involvement among those who might benefit most. She is a former Fulbright Scholar and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Education Policy and an M.P.P. and B.A. in Public Policy from Vanderbilt University.

Randomized evaluation of a school-based, trauma-informed group intervention for young women in Chicago
Science Advances journal publication.

Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes among Adolescents
Read our academic paper on the early Saga studies published in the American Economic Review.
Back to Our Future (B2OF)
Back to Our Future (B2OF) is an effort to re-engage disconnected youth and connect them back to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) or other education completion opportunities.

Personalized Learning Initiative: Tutor Corps Evaluation
The University of Chicago Education Lab is partnering with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to scale personalized tutoring in the wake of the pandemic.

Personalized Learning Initiative
The Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI) is a moonshot to overcome pandemic learning loss and aims to bring high-dosage tutoring to students nationwide.

Chicago Student Success Initiative (CSSI)
The Education Lab partnered with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to develop new interventions for schools disproportionately serving students at the highest risk of school dropout or violence involvement.
