Allison Crean Davis
Chief Research Officer
Allison has led research, evaluation, and technical assistance projects at the national, state, and local levels for a range of clients within the PK–20 educational ecosystem. A throughline for her work has been helping policymakers, practitioners, and partners generate and leverage evidence to inform decision making, ultimately fostering systems that provide high-quality learning opportunities and positive outcomes for all students. A lifelong athlete, Allison sees growth, improvement, and accomplishment as a team sport. She believes that educational partners, when collectively focused and aligned on their goals, policies, resources, and evidence-based practices, can and do alter the trajectories of individual students, families, systems, and communities.
Prior to joining Education Northwest, Allison served as vice president, education studies, at Westat. She was director of the National Comprehensive Center (funded by the U.S. Department of Education) and the National Summer Learning and Enrichment Study (funded by The Wallace Foundation.) Previously, Allison served as a partner at Bellwether, where she launched and grew the organization’s research and evaluation practice and led a portfolio of mixed-methods studies, quasi-experiments, and evaluation capacity-building projects. She began her career in education research as director of research: data systems and development at the North Central Regional Education Laboratory. Allison has served on the boards of several educational organizations, including as board chair and co-founder of Maine’s first public charter high school focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. She currently serves on the board and as an executive committee member for Knowledge Alliance, ensuring high-quality, relevant research remains key to solving the biggest educational challenges facing our country today.
Education
- Ph.D., Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology
- B.A., Psychology; B.A., Spanish, Lafayette College
