Sarah Dolfin

Sarah Dolfin specializes in conducting and assessing rigorous evaluations in the areas of training and education using data from multiple sources.

In her current work on labor standards and policies, Dolfin directs the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) Compliance Strategies Evaluation for the U.S. Department of Labor, Chief Evaluation Office to support WHD in effectively promoting compliance with the standards it enforces. She also directs a study to address research questions for the Department of Labor through analysis of administrative program data. In the past, she directed several studies for the Wage and Hour Division investigating the effectiveness of its targeting strategies and conducting research on overtime regulations. She was the principal investigator for research on labor market nondiscrimination policies for the Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research.

Dolfin has studied the benefits of training related to the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. She directed an evaluation of a set of eight supply chain management certifications developed under a TAA Community College and Career Training grant by a consortium of community colleges and universities led by Broward College. She played a lead role in evaluating the TAA program, which provides training and financial support to workers displaced by trade, and she directed a study examining TAA program underexpenditures.

Dolfin’s current work in the education area includes an experimental evaluation of the impact of EL Education’s Teacher Potential Project on students’ achievement in English language arts. She was previously deputy project director for Mathematica’s evaluation of comprehensive teacher induction programs, and she provided analytic and technical support on education research conducted by the Regional Educational Laboratories.

Dolfin was previously an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine. She has coauthored several book chapters on education policy and published in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Labour Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, and Applied Economics. A member of the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.