Norma Ming

"Norma Ming is Manager of Research and Evaluation in San Francisco Unified School District’s Research, Planning, and Assessment Division, where she oversees the district’s research portfolio and leads internal evaluations. Her work focuses on establishing and studying the conditions and supports that enable integrating research and practice for continuous improvement in education. This includes developing learning agendas, drawing from existing evidence syntheses, coordinating research partnerships, supporting improvement teams, and facilitating the implementation of evidence-based policy and practice. Recent publications include a framework for assessing research worth using, recommendations for the future of education of research at IES as part of a National Academies committee, and a call to the field to strengthen supports for education agency research staff.

Dr. Ming is a Co-Principal Investigator on an institutional challenge grant awarded by the W.T. Grant Foundation, jointly-funded by the Spencer Foundation and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, to address inequities in school attendance and engagement through youth-led inquiry. As a former K-12 and university educator, with a B.A. in chemistry from Harvard and Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University, she is especially passionate about building systems to integrate multiple streams of evidence to improve education. She continues to build on this foundation when supporting district and school leaders in obtaining, analyzing, and interpreting data and evidence to inform decisions."