Staff
Maria-Paz Avery
Strategic Director
Maria-Paz B. Avery, Ph.D.is a Strategic Director in the Education, Employment, and Community rograms division at Education Development Center. Currently co-director of the New England Comprehensive Assistance Center, one of her primary responsibilities is the Schoolwide Programs Network designed to assist schools develop and implement school improvement plans with the goal of increasing student achievement. In addition, she develops capacity building workshops, tools, and other technical assistance strategies focusing on such topics as using data to make district- and school- based decisions, using classroom-based data to make instructional decisions, strategic planning, and creating collaborative school cultures. She has assisted in the development of online courses on gender issues in math and science education, classroom assessment, and understanding student performance gaps through root cause analysis. Dr. Avery has extensive experience as a site-based management trainer and has consulted extensively on organizational and multicultural issues with schools throughout the country. She brings her experience as a psychologist working in cross-cultural, community settings to help understand the issues of historically disenfranchised families and students. As a researcher she has focused on ethnographic and qualitative research in a variety of settings—schools, girls programs, welfare systems, and corporations.
