At CSDC, Ms. Nelson is an Accountability Specialist working with charter schools and their granting agencies on issues of accountability, particularly in the areas of educational programs, governance and operations. She has worked on a number of School Quality Reviews as part of CSDC teams. Prior to joining CSDC, Nelson had extensive experience with charter schools, improving educational programs for low-performing schools, and programs serving English language learners. Nelson has also engaged in direct policy work—she spent nearly 10 years at the US Department of Education-most of it with a program focused on teacher training. In addition, as part of a research firm, she worked with teams to design educational policy alternatives for several states including California and Hawaii. She has conducted policy research and evaluations at both the state and national levels of programs and services for limited English proficiency students, including a groundbreaking study of California programs and services for English language learners. Nelson was the manager of a six-year US Department of Education contract-funded National Study of Charter Schools. Nelson has engaged both in research and school support in two states (California and Oregon) around systemic improvement of schools through creating high performance learning communities in schools serving large percentages of poor and minority students also supported by the US Department of Education. In California, she worked with a group of low-performing middle schools to help them better use data to focus on the challenges of improving their achievement levels. Finally, she worked with a group of 30 charter schools to better use data to drive improvements in their teaching and learning processes. Nelson earned a Master’s degree in Public Policy from U.C. Berkeley.