Elisabeth Davis

Elisabeth Davis, PhD, is a principal researcher in the Education Systems and Policy program at American Institutes for Research (AIR). Her primary responsibilities include serving as the Director of AIR’s Evidence Support Center, working with educators to understand, find, and use evidence-based practices that fit their local context. Dr. Davis also the principal investigator for several federally-funded evaluations, including the impact evaluation for the NSF funded S-STEM-REC grant (as a sub-grantee to AAAS), Code.org’s Early Phase Education Innovation Research grant, Equity in AP CSP, Jobs for the Future’s Mid-Phase Education Innovation Research grant, the Lone Star STEM program, and as co-PI of Text4College, an IES funded scale up grant. She serves as a task lead on the IES-funded RESTART Network, where she is leading a nation-wide scan and synthesis of educator needs and activities aimed at recovering from the educational effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Davis is also a founding member of the Cleveland Alliance for Education Research, a Research Practice Partnership with the Cleveland Metro School District and Cleveland State University, where she has secured several federal and philanthropic grants to further the district’s research agenda over the past eight years, including an IES-funded RPP grant on English Learner college readiness, an Office of English Language Acquisition-funded National Professional Development grant, Project ELEVATE, on increasing the number of TESOL certified teachers in the district, and a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett foundation on examining the implementation and effectiveness of CMSD’s summer learning experience. She has extensive experience in college access, readiness, and success, and with researcher-practitioner partnerships, and applies this content expertise to all of her projects. Dr. Davis has been a What Works Clearinghouse certified reviewer since 2014, and holds a PhD in research methodology from Loyola University-Chicago.