DANA BRINSON is a consultant with Public Impact. She has conducted research and analysis on a wide variety of education issues, including educational philanthropy, school improvement and turnarounds, disconnected youth, talent assessment and selection, and charter schools. Ms. Brinson conducts critical fact-finding through interviews, literature reviews, site visits, and other qualitative methods.  She also serves as dissemination coordinator for Public Impact. Ms. Brinson previously worked as a special educator at a Boston-area public school for teens with behavioral and emotional challenges and learning disabilities. Ms. Brinson is a summa cum laude graduate of West Virginia University and holds a master's degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Example Projects: Ms. Brinson has consulted with philanthropic foundations to evaluate grantee results, develop effective approaches to grant making, and foster greater involvement by corporate and private foundations in educational philanthropy.  She built on Public Impact’s prior work to write Corporations, Chambers, and Charters: How Businesses Can Support High-Quality Public Charter Schools for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce. Ms. Brinson’s research on school improvement and turnaround issues has focused on successful leader actions, the school turnaround process, leadership selection and development, and school restructuring efforts.  In School Turnarounds: Actions and Results, Ms. Brinson co-authored vignettes of school turnarounds for the Center on Innovation and Improvement (CII).  Also for CII, she co-authored Breaking the Habit of Low Performance, which presents actions and results in five schools that improved student performance and exited restructuring status after many years of failure. Ms. Brinson has also conducted extensive charter school-related work for state and federal departments of education and other organizations.  This work has centered on supporting charter school quality, charter authorizing, charter school replication, and special education in charter schools.  Ms. Brinson developed "A Commitment to Quality: National Charter School Policy Forum Report" for the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. In addition, Ms. Brinson has co-authored Exploring Success in the Charter Sector: Case Studies of Six Charter Schools Engaged in Promising Practices for Children with Disabilities for the Center on Reinventing Public Education.  She also co-authored Public Impact’s 2007 report to the North Carolina Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools to help the Board of Education amend the state’s charter school policies.

Contact Dana Brinson