About the National High School Center
Friends of the National High School Center
Nancy Ames
Nancy Ames is Vice-President and Director of the Center for Family, School, and Community Programs (FSC) at Education Development Center, Inc. FSC houses close to 40 staff working on comprehensive school reform, middle-grades and high school education, literacy development, parent engagement, and strategies to promote success for students who are at risk of educational failure. FSC focuses especially on urban schools and districts and addresses those students who are traditionally underserved due to race/ethnicity, first language, poverty, immigrant status, and disability. The center engages in policy research and evaluation, analysis, professional development and technical assistance. It works with hundreds of schools and school systems across the country.
Ms. Ames is a co-founding member of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform on which the National High School Alliance was modeled. She was the principal investigator for AIM at Middle Grades Results, a 5-year research and demonstration project funded by IES to develop, test and disseminate a comprehensive school reform model. She co-authored, with Edward Miller, Changing Middle Schools: How to Make Schools Work for Young Adolescents, which highlighted four urban middle schools that underwent deep transformation (Jossey-Bass, 1994). She is a member of the National High School Alliance and serves and has published numerous articles and policy papers on topics of interest to secondary school educators.
Prior to joining EDC, Ms. Ames spent nearly 13 years as a senior researcher at Abt Associates Inc., where she conducted policy research on a variety of educational and justice issues. She is an active member of several national educational policy groups, including the National Educational Knowledge Industry Association (NEKIA), where she serves on the board.
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