Elizabeth Albro Acting Commissioner of the National Center for Education Research |
Elizabeth Albro was designated Acting Commissioner of Education Research in the Institute of Education Sciences in August 2011. She heads the National Center for Education Research, one of four centers within the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.
Albro joined the U.S. Department of Education in 2002 as a Society for Research in Child Development/American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy Fellow at the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. She subsequently served as an education research analyst at the Institute of Education Sciences. In that role, she served as the program officer for multiple research grant topics, including Cognition and Student Learning, Reading and Writing Education, and Interventions for Struggling Adolescent and Adult Readers and Writers. In 2007, she was named Associate Commissioner for the Teaching and Learning Division of the National Center for Education Research.
Prior to joining the Department, Albro served on the Psychology faculty at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She has also served on the Child Development and Education faculty at Whittier College, and as lead preschool teacher at the Cochabamba Cooperative School in Bolivia. Albro served on review panels for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and reviewed for journals such as Social Development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and Narrative Inquiry.
Albro's research has focused on the development of young children's narrative understanding, a foundation of early reading comprehension. In addition, she has explored the ways in which preschool children's memory for interpersonal experiences contributes to their socio-emotional well-being. She has authored journal articles and chapters on both of these topics.
Albro received her B.A. in behavioral sciences, her M.A. in the social sciences, and her Ph.D. in psychology with a focus on cognition and communication from the University of Chicago.
About us:
The National Center for Education Research (NCER), one of the four centers within the Institute of Education Sciences, supports rigorous research that contributes to the solution of significant education problems in our country.
Through its research programs and the national research and development centers, NCER supports research activities to improve the quality of education and thereby, increase student academic achievement, reduce the achievement gap between high-performing and low-performing students, and increase access to and completion of postsecondary education. NCER also funds predoctoral and postdoctoral research training programs to invest in the training and development of the next generation of education researchers.
NCER research programs are designed to produce research that is scientifically rigorous and relevant to the needs of education practitioners and decisionmakers. NCER research programs address education programs, practices, and policies in reading and writing, mathematics and science education, teacher quality, education leadership, education policy and finance, cognition and student learning, high school reform, and postsecondary education. Within these programs of research, investigators are identifying existing education programs, practices, and policies that may impact student outcomes; developing new education interventions (e.g., curricula, teacher professional development programs); evaluating the efficacy of fully developed programs or practices; evaluating the effectiveness of specific interventions taken to scale; and developing and validating assessments. Through these activities, NCER is advancing understanding of teaching, learning, and education systems in order to improve the quality of education for all students.
