Laura Stelitano

Laura Stelitano is an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Stelitano's research primarily focuses on K-12 education and policy implementation. She is interested in exploring how districts, school leaders, and teachers make sense of new policies and reforms and incorporate them into their daily work. Her interests include special education and inclusion, professional learning communities, standards of learning, accountability, and reforms such as mastery and personalization. She incorporates qualitative and social network techniques to develop rich case studies in order to more deeply understand and connect district, school, and teacher responses to policy. Prior to joining RAND, Stelitano worked as a research associate at the American Institutes for Research and as a middle school special education teacher in Washington, D.C. She earned her M.Ed. in special education at George Mason University and her B.A. in anthropology at Saint Vincent College. Stelitano received her Ph.D. in learning sciences and policy at the University of Pittsburgh.