Rachel Perera

Rachel Perera is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D. student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research interests include school and neighborhood segregation, school discipline, teacher quality, teacher retention, and school leadership.

Prior to joining Pardee RAND, she worked at Teach For America, most recently serving as director of research partnerships and working on research projects related to teacher preparation, effectiveness, and retention. She has an M.P.A. from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University and a B.A. in history and political science from Hofstra University. As part of a capstone team at Wagner, she studied the effects of school closures on student academic outcomes in New York City.