Joanna Hornig Fox is a senior policy analyst and program developer at the Center for Social Organization of Schools. Overall, her interests lie in specific steps states, districts and schools can take in making improvements that lead to greater student achievement, and how partnerships can most effectively support these steps.  She focuses on policies and practices in the states with the greatest number and percentages of high school dropouts, seeking to identify those areas that lead to solutions or help develop understanding of challenges. She also co-leads an effort to apply what has been learned through research into efforts that help more students succeed in high school, developing curriculum to better prepare twelfth graders for success in college (College Know How, funded through the Institute of Education Sciences); as well as a future curriculum effort focusing on improving high school science learning for students in challenged high schools. In addition, she works with the science department at Baltimore Talent Development High School to directly improve science teaching; and develops science partnerships with students and faculty members that support this initiative.

In these efforts, Fox applies learning from the past 20 years, including 10 years spent in developing and implementing high school and district participation in comprehensive school reform in rural and urban areas in six southern states and the District of Columbia, designing and providing technical assistance and professional development for district and school personnel in these same states and districts, and more than 10 years in building civic organizations, a science museum, and math and science-related support for secondary teachers in Georgia. Fox formerly served as southern regional manager for Talent Development High Schools; director of the Urban Network of High Schools That Work of the Southern Regional Education Board; secondary schools manager for DC ACTs, and developed and guided numerous science programs for secondary teachers at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing. She holds a bachelor’s degree cum laude in biology from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges in Harvard University.