Stacey Pelika

Stacey Pelika is the Director of Research at the National Education Association (NEA), part of NEA’s Education Policy and Implementation Center. NEA is the nation’s largest labor union and represents three million teachers, faculty, education support professionals, and other staff working in PK-12 and higher education. Stacey is a passionate advocate for public education and leads a team that carries out quantitative and qualitative research, conducts program evaluations and strategic research, tracks new research and data releases by other organizations and scholars, and coordinates NEA’s relationships with external researchers. Stacey also leads NEA’s cross-center team on artificial intelligence in education and co-leads its efforts to address the national educator shortage crisis. Prior to joining NEA, Stacey was the Director of Research at the Children’s Defense Fund and an Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary.