Nancy Adelman

Nancy Adelman, Ph.D., is associate director of the Center for Education Policy at SRI International, and program manager for Transitions: Secondary School to College and Beyond. She has more than 20 years of experience in contract research and evaluation.

Prior to her work in the contracting sector, she conducted research as an independent consultant and for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. She also has worked as an adjunct instructor in preservice teacher education and has taught in elementary and middle schools in several states.

Adelman's research, evaluation, and policy interests are broadly based, covering the full range of current reform and restructuring issues confronting American education, with a strong emphasis on secondary school reform, successful youth transitions from high school to college or the workplace, youth development, and school choice programs. She is the principal investigator for the national evaluation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Early College High School Initiative and for the evaluation of the California Multiple Pathways District Initiative, which is managed by ConnectEd and supported by the James Irvine Foundation.

In addition, Adelman serves as co-principal investigator for an evaluation of the Texas High School Project, a statewide high school reform effort supported by a public-private alliance of funders. In the past, Adelman directed an evaluation of the Carnegie Corporation's Schools for a New Society Initiative and a study of state and local dual high school/college enrollment policies conducted for the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Education. She served as principal investigator on the U.S. Department of Education-sponsored evaluation of the Public Charter School Program. The final report for this study was released in 2004.

Adelman earned her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, where her studies focused on change in educational organizations.