Cara Jackson is a senior associate in the Social and Economic Policy division at Abt Associates, where she conducts evaluations of educational programs and systematic reviews of research. Prior to joining Abt, she was an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, evaluating charter school program replication and expansion grants. Cara has also worked in Montgomery County Public School’s Office of Shared Accountability, designing studies to inform district policies and conducting research on a variety of educational initiatives, and was a  Strategic Data Project fellow at Urban Teachers, a residency-based teacher preparation program. Cara has experience as a classroom teacher in the Bronx and as a policy analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. She received her doctorate in education policy at the University of Maryland.