Billie Jo Day
About
Partnership Task Lead
Billie Jo Day, PhD, a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), serves as the Working in Partnership with Stakeholders task lead for Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southwest. In this role, she maintains connections with critical education stakeholders across the region, leading partnership development and outreach strategies to position REL Southwest as a trusted resource and ensure that new projects align with regional needs. For the last 8 years, Dr. Day has served as a partnership lead and a state liaison for REL Midwest and led the usability and feasibility study for the Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Middle School (PRISMS) Toolkit for REL Southwest. As a community-focused researcher, Dr. Day collaborates with education stakeholders to co‑design strategies and partnerships that respond to regional needs, while helping shape the project’s vision and foster coherence across tasks to ensure a unified approach to improving outcomes. She has more than 20 years of experience in working closely with state and local education leaders to design and implement evidence-based practices that are responsive to local needs.
In addition to REL Southwest, Dr. Day co-leads an Institute of Education Sciences-funded evaluation of a literacy program and a network of rural postsecondary researchers. Before joining AIR, she was a research assistant with the Chicago Consortium on School Research at the University of Chicago. Day earned a Master of Education degree in higher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and holds a doctorate from the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.