Nada Rayyes, Ph.D., has a decade of experience working in educational research and evaluation. Her areas of interest and expertise include research methods, evaluation, post-high school readiness, and equity in education. Nada obtained a B.A. and M.A. in social science from UC Irvine, and then applied her research skills to exploring educational problems while working for WestEd's Evaluation Research program. As a doctoral student at UC Santa Barbara, Nada worked for the Office of Academic Preparation conducting research on student diversity, after-school and teacher professional development programs, and school-university partnerships. In 2005, she was awarded the Urban Education Research Fellowship by the Los Angeles Unified School District's Research and Planning Division, where she worked as a fellow and an analyst for several years, exposed to the unique experiences of conducting research and evaluation in the second largest school district in the nation. At LAUSD, Nada designed and conducted a study identifying promising practices in successful charter schools, co-led a project examining the implementation of Small Learning Communities in Los Angeles, and studied the practices of struggling high schools that successfully met Adequate Yearly Progress to exit "program improvement" status. Nada's interests and expertise extend to developing research tools, issues of school climate and culture, school and district reform, and social contexts of education including gender, racial and economic equity.

At BPA, Nada is conducting qualitative analysis for the Evaluation of Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL). She is also leading the evaluation review task for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Evaluation.