Sarah Crittenden Fuller

Sarah Crittenden Fuller holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. She currently serves as Principal Investigator for a Spencer Foundation funded project looking at the impacts of COVID-19 on students, teachers, and schools in North Carolina; the multi-year evaluation of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) North Carolina intervention; and an evaluation of the Rethink Education Initiative. She is also leading an Institute of Education Sciences funded grant in partnership with the Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration (OLR) at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to examine the impact of OLR sponsored programs on COVID-19 recovery for students.  Other areas of ongoing research include teacher and principal preparation, the impacts of school nutrition on academic outcomes, and the influence of hurricanes in North Carolina on childhood outcomes.  Fuller’s work leverages large administrative datasets and quasi-experimental designs to estimate the causal effects of particular policies or events on student outcomes. She uses primarily quantitative methods to address research questions surrounding schools and students focusing on questions that have the potential to inform policy decisions.  Fuller has received grant funding from the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the W.T. Grant Foundation. She has recent publications in Natural Hazards Review, Education Finance and Policy, Urban Education, Social Science Researcher, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.