Katrina Woodworth, EdD, has a long record of research on K–12 school improvement efforts and more than 15 years of experience directing large mixed-methods research studies. She leads SRI’s Teaching Quality and School Reform group.

Woodworth specializes in evaluating efforts to ensure teaching quality and improve educational outcomes for underserved students. Current studies related to teaching quality focus on the transition to the Common Core standards. For example, she is leading an evaluation of the University of California, Irvine, Writing Project’s Pathway to Academic Success, an Education Innovation and Research (EIR) project designed to support secondary teachers with Common Core-aligned writing instruction. The evaluation relies on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design and assesses both program implementation and impact.

Recently completed studies of efforts to raise the achievement of underserved students include an evaluation of an International Baccalaureate pilot program that aimed to increase low-income student participation in the IB Diploma Programme, an evaluation of an effort in the Oakland Unified School District to support personalized blended learning (by integrating face-to-face instruction with online learning), an examination of the implementation and impact of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) model in five San Francisco Bay Area schools, and an RCT on the effects of online learning as a strategy to extend learning time at Rocketship Education’s charter schools.

Woodworth has also conducted large-scale inventories of policies and practice, including a decade-long examination of the status of the teaching profession in California (known as Teaching and California’s Future), a Hewlett Foundation-supported study of the status of arts education in California that culminated in a suite of reports entitled An Unfinished Canvas, and a Bechtel Foundation-supported study on the status of science education in California.

Across these studies, Woodworth has engaged with funders and stakeholders to develop logic models and research designs, developed surveys and analyzed survey data, led case study work, overseen analysis of extant data (including student achievement data), and integrated qualitative and quantitative findings to communicate complex information to policy audiences and program developers.

Woodworth holds a doctoral and master’s degree in education from Harvard University.

Key projects

1. Evaluation of Pathway to Academic Success (an EIR Expansion project)
2. Statewide Study of Arts Education in California in 2020
3. Profiles of Selected Practices of Charter Schools, Charter Management Organizations, and Charter School Authorizers
4. Evaluation of the Implementation of the ESEA Title VI Indian Education LEA Grants Program
5. Evaluation of the McKnight Foundation’s Pathway Schools Initiative