CJ Park

Principal Education Researcher, SRI Education

CJ Park has decades of experience leading and managing large-scale research on efforts to improve teaching and support students’ success in school and beyond. Her expertise includes designing and leading complex mixed-methods studies that examine implementation, outcomes, and the conditions that support improvement. Her work includes developing implementation metrics that help assess progress, interpreting findings, and connecting implementation to outcomes, as well as communicating research findings to funders, education leaders, practitioners, and other external audiences. 

At SRI, much of Park’s research examines schoolwide and systems-level approaches to improving teaching and student outcomes. She co-leads a multiyear study, funded by Schusterman Family Philanthropies, examining K–5 literacy instruction across four urban school districts, with a focus on how district systems, instructional materials, and professional learning support classroom instruction and student learning. She also co-leads two evaluations of Transcend Education’s Whole Child Model, a comprehensive schoolwide approach to supporting student engagement, well-being, and academic success. The studies examine the model’s implementation, impact, and scale-up across diverse urban and rural settings. 

Park’s work on teaching and learning also includes multiple mixed-methods studies of the National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program, an approach to supporting teachers in helping students develop complex, source-based arguments. Other studies have examined districtwide early literacy and numeracy initiatives and professional learning designed to strengthen instructional practice. 

Park also studies college and career readiness and career and technical education. She leads the development of indicators to assess the quality of career-themed pathways in Los Angeles Unified School District in the context of a study of pathway impacts. She also led a multisite randomized controlled trial of Skills for Secondary School Success, a middle school course designed to strengthen students’ socioemotional competencies and support successful transitions into high school. Her other work includes evaluations of initiatives designed to expand high-quality pathways in cybersecurity, computer science, and health care, as well as schoolwide models such as Linked Learning, which integrates rigorous academics with career-based learning. She also studies innovative high school models for students who are off track to graduate through the Barr Foundation’s Engage New England Initiative. As co-lead of the Improving Postsecondary Transitions Partnership for the Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia, she provided rural educators with research-based technical assistance on strategies to support students’ transitions to postsecondary education. 

Park holds a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University and an undergraduate degree in economics and sociology from Rutgers University.

Key projects

• School System Approaches to Strengthening Literacy Instruction 
• National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program 
• Evaluation of the Career Connected Pathways Project 
• Evaluation of Skills for Secondary Success 
• Oakland Health Career Pathways Project 
• Evaluation of the Engage New England Initiative 

Selected publications

• Nonacademic Interventions for Postsecondary Enrollment and Success with Rural and High-Poverty Populations: A Systematic Evidence Review
• Ready Schools Miami: Year 2 Evaluation Findings