Ashley Woo is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D. student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research interests include wealth and income inequality, educational equity, neighborhood and school segregation, teacher recruitment and retention, education curriculum, and standards-based school reform.
Prior to joining Pardee RAND, she worked for KIPP LA Schools, where she taught second grade at a South Los Angeles charter school. In addition, she is a Teach for America alumna, having completed two years of teaching at a Title I elementary school in Miami, Florida. As a former educator, she is experienced in standards-based and data-driven instruction, curriculum design, and tailoring teaching methods to support specific academic and social-emotional student needs.
She has a B.A. in political economy and a minor in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also conducted research on how American educational outcomes compare to those of other wealthy, industrialized nations in terms of both equity and levels of student achievement.