Elaine Weiss

Elaine Weiss has been the lead policy analyst, income security, for the National Academy of Social Insurance since January 2019. She was the national coordinator for the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (BBA) from 2011 to 2017. There she worked with four cochairs, a high-level advisory board, and multiple coalition partners to promote a comprehensive, evidence-based set of policies to allow all children to thrive in school and in life. Major publications for BBA include case studies of diverse communities that employ comprehensive, whole-child approaches to education across the country. She has coauthored two studies with Economic Policy Institute economist Emma Garcia on early achievement gaps and strategies to reduce them. With Don Long, she wrote a 2013 report, “Market-Oriented Education Reforms’ Rhetoric Trumps Reality,” and she wrote a 2013 Economic Policy Institute paper, “Mismatches in Race to the Top Limit Educational Improvement.” In 2014, Elaine worked with multiple educators to write a series of commentaries for Bill Moyers & Company on the many links between poverty and education. She has also written dozens of blogs for the Huffington Post, the Washington Post Answer Sheet, Talk Poverty, the Nation, and other publications. Prior to her work with BBA, Weiss served as project manager for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Partnership for America’s Economic Success campaign. Weiss has also served as a member of a Centers for Disease Control task force on child abuse and as volunteer counsel for clients at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.