Prior to joining Knowledge Alliance, Rachel Dinkes was a Principal Researcher at AIR. Throughout her career at AIR, Dr. Dinkes provided support and expertise to projects supporting the United States Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

For 15 years, Dr. Dinkes served as a United States delegate to three Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) education groups and represented the United States Department of Education at over 40 international meetings. Dr. Dinkes ensured that United States education data presented in international publications was comparable with other countries and that the United States was accurately and fairly portrayed in the report. Dr. Dinkes also led the OECD’s work to develop sub-national indicators which make international statistics more relevant to United States policy makers.

Dr. Dinkes was the project director and co-author with NCES on the 2019 seminal, congressionally- mandated report, Study of the Title I, Part A Grant Program Mathematical Formulas. This report responded to a mandate under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to examine the federal allocation and distribution of Title I funds to understand whether existing formulas benefit or unduly disadvantage any school districts. As a part of this project, Dr. Dinkes helped oversee the development of a school-district Comparable Wage-Index (CWI) to provide insight on the actual purchasing power of federal funds.

During her tenure at AIR, Dr. Dinkes was an author on multiple editions of the Condition of Education, the Digest of Education Statistics, and Indicators of School Crime and Safety.

Dr. Dinkes earned her PhD from George Washington University and her Masters degree from the London School of Economics. Prior to her graduate work, she was a Survey Statistician at the U.S. Bureau of the Census.