Ritu Khanna

As a senior advisor with California Education Partners, Dr. Ritu Khanna supports the organization’s Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) program through project management, data analysis, and leadership of two active RPPs. She also helps lead the California RPP Subnetwork, in collaboration with the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP). In this role, she designs and facilitates network convenings, manages collaborative projects, synthesizes emerging research, and develops concise briefs to share learnings from the field—advancing collective understanding of effective RPP work.

Dr. Khanna brings over thirty years of experience in public education, most recently serving as Chief of Research, Planning, and Accountability for the San Francisco Unified School District. There, she led districtwide efforts to strengthen data-driven decision-making, implement comprehensive accountability systems, and build educators’ capacity to use research and data to inform practice. By pursuing strategies grounded in the best available evidence and data, education leaders can better meet the needs of students and educators, and help improve student outcomes.

A longtime advocate for bridging research and practice, Dr. Khanna has partnered with leading universities—including Stanford—to institutionalize RPPs that inform policy, improve instruction, and enhance student outcomes. Her work has been nationally recognized and she serves on the Advisory board of California’s Cradle-To-Career Data Systems as well as the W.T.Grant Foundation for their Institutional Challenge Grant review and selection committee. She holds a doctorate in Education with a specialization in statistics and measurement, and dual master’s degrees in Educational and Industrial Psychology. She has also served as a part time professor teaching research and statistics at the Masters and Doctorate level in the Educational Leadership program at a few of the Bay Area Universities.

Driven by a deep belief in the power of research to inform equity-focused change, Ritu brings a calm, purposeful, and collaborative approach to helping systems translate all data into meaningful action.