Katrina Woodworth

Director, center for education research and innovation, SRI Education

Katrina Woodworth, EdD, has a long record of research on K–12 school improvement efforts and 20 years of experience directing large mixed-methods research studies. She is a director of the Center for Education Research and Innovation (CERI), comprising more than 50 researchers and revenue of more than $25 million annually. Across her studies, Woodworth has engaged with funders and collaborators 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.

At SRI, Woodworth specializes in evaluating efforts to ensure teaching quality and improve educational outcomes for underserved students. Her current and recent work related to teaching quality focuses on studies of teacher professional learning aligned with college- and career-ready standards and efforts to increase the diversity of the educator workforce. For example, she recently completed an evaluation of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) 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 relied on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design and assessed both program implementation and impact. She is currently leading a study of the National Center for Teacher Residencies’ Centering Equity project to develop and scale teacher residencies through a Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant.

Woodworth’s studies of efforts to raise the achievement of underserved students include an ongoing study of the Urban District Literacy Collaborative, funded by Schusterman Family Philanthropies, and an evaluation of the McKnight Foundation’s Pathway Schools Initiative in the Twin Cities area. She also conducted an evaluation of an International Baccalaureate (IB) pilot program that aimed to increase the participation of students from low-income households in the IB Diploma Programme, and 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). Further, Woodworth examined the implementation and impact of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) model in five San Francisco Bay Area schools, and she led 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), Hewlett Foundation-supported studies of the status of arts education in California, and a Bechtel Foundation-supported study on the status of science education in California.

Woodworth has published in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, the Journal of Educational Psychology, and Phi Delta Kappan, and she has presented at American Educational Research Association annual meetings and Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness conferences, among others. She holds a doctorate and master’s degree in education from Harvard University.

Key projects

• Study of the National Center for Teacher Residencies’ Centering Equity project
• Evaluation of Pathway to Academic Success (an EIR Expansion project)
• Creativity Challenge: The State of Arts Education in California
• Evaluation of the Implementation of the ESEA Title VI Indian Education LEA Grants Program
  Evaluation of the McKnight Foundation’s Pathway Schools Initiative