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Alejandra Lopez-Torkos

Social Scientist

Alejandra Lopez-Torkos, Ph.D., has a background in social research methodology. Areas of particular interest include educational access and equity; racial, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity in schools; and school choice policy. She has expertise in evaluation design as well as quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis.

Dr. Lopez-Torkos helps lead the Evaluation of the California Multiple Pathways District Initiative; as part of her work on this study, she is leading the quasi-experimental analysis of student outcomes. She also lends design expertise to a study of a curriculum targeting content-rich vocabulary development among struggling adolescent readers, and works on SRI's national evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund Program, leading the survey component of the project.

Recent project work includes a 3-year study of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, which focused on the implementation of the KIPP model and the program's effects on teachers and students. For this study, she led the quasi-experimental analysis of KIPP student academic performance compared with that of similar students surrounding school districts. Dr. Lopez-Torkos was a researcher on an evaluation of the California Subject Matter Projects (CSMP), for which she led an assessment of the effect of teacher participation in CSMP professional development on student achievement. Her past work at SRI also includes a study of the status of arts education in California, a national evaluation of elementary mathematics curricula, and a national study of Title I accountability systems and school improvement efforts.

Dr. Lopez-Torkos earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in education from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her B.A. in psychology from Stanford University.