A Senior Research Associate who joined WestEd in 2007, Elizabeth Burr coordinates research projects, including policy analyses, literature reviews, and syntheses, for the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West.

Burr also co-leads the dissemination and public outreach strategy for the entire REL, and manages Ask-A-REL/Reference Desk, providing references and referrals on research-based education questions for stakeholders in our region.

From 2003–2007, Burr was a Project Director at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University, where she studied youth development. Prior to that, Burr was a Project Director at Policy Analysis for California Education, where her work focused on early education.

Burr has authored a number of publications on early education and English learner students. Her 2015 REL West report, Identifying and supporting English learner students with learning disabilities: Key issues in the literature and state practice, was instrumental to legislation passed in California in 2016. The legislation requires the Department of Education to develop a manual to provide guidance to local educational agencies (LEAs) to support English learner students who may also be individuals with exceptional needs and to create a plan for the dissemination of the guidance manual and for providing professional development in using the guidance manual. Burr is currently assisting the department with the development of the manual.

Burr received a BA from Brown University and an MPA from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.