Anna Weiss

Anna is a Leadership for Educational Equity Public Policy Fellow working with the Data and Policy team to support their qualitative and survey work, data work, and the production of their reports. She was born and raised in the Chicagoland area and received her B.A. in English literature and creative writing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.S.Ed. in urban education from the University of Pennsylvania. Anna began her career in education as a Teach For America 2005 corps member in the School District of Philadelphia, then in the midst of piloting its multiple provider model, where she taught 7^th and 8^th grade social studies at a school that had recently transitioned to EMO management.  She then joined the staff at Mastery Charter Schools, where she was first a part of the founding middle school team at their Lenfest site and then became a teacher coach at the central office.  As a teacher coach, Anna had the opportunity to work with and observe teachers of varying experience levels, subject areas, and grade levels, and she also had the opportunity to partner with school leaders of varying experience levels, professional backgrounds, and areas of expertise as well.  This role also gave her direct exposure to school sites in varying states of turnaround.  Her experiences in Philadelphia piqued her initial interest in the impact of district leadership and school leadership, and in particular, the implications the relationship between district and school leadership have for the daily work of students and teachers.

After seven years in Philadelphia, Anna moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she continued to work in school leader support at the central office level, specifically helping train novice school leaders on teacher coaching and evaluation.  As an Educator Effectiveness Specialist on the Talent team at Oakland Unified School District, she worked with a network of principals and teacher coaches to scale up a piloted teacher evaluation system.  She also helped revise the teacher evaluation rubric and supported new teacher induction programming.

Most recently, Anna has been studying school leadership and charter school staff culture at Vanderbilt University, where she is a doctoral candidate in their Leadership, Policy, and Organizations department.  As a graduate student, she also supported a number of qualitative projects at the Tennessee Education Research Alliance focusing on school leadership pipeline efforts in Tennessee and specifically around recruitment and preparation efforts. She is also an instructor at American University’s School of Education, where she teaches a master’s level course in research methods.

Anna is thrilled to be back in Chicago after nearly twenty years! She is a big film buff, art lover, and live music fan and hopes to reacquaint herself with all of the venues she enjoyed in her youth.