Anna Saavedra, EdD

Biography

Anna Saavedra is a founding co-Director of the Center for Applied Research in Education (CARE)  at the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. She is also a co-founder and Director of Research of the USC EdPolicy Hub at the USC Rossier School of Education.

Her substantive areas of expertise include curriculum and instruction, civics education, and American families’ educational experiences. She has led several large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCT) of curriculum and professional development interventions. From 2015-21, Anna led as Principal Investigator a five-district randomized controlled trial (RCT) efficacy study of the Knowledge in Action project-based approach to Advanced Placement U.S. Government and AP Environmental Science. Based on the study results, the College Board is changing Advance Placement courses and corresponding exams to make them more project based. Anna is currently the PI of a five-year RCT efficacy study (2024-29) of a Street Law program, “Talking About Local Current and Contested Issues in Schools,” designed to help teachers facilitate classroom discussions of contested topics, with funding from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). She is also co-PI of an IES-funded RCT (2021-25) of Generation Citizen’s civics program for schools. Anna’s other civics-related work  includes her present work about the intersection of math and civics, an evaluation of “academic civic-mindedness” in the International Baccalaureate diploma programme (2016), national measurement of students’ online civic reasoning (2021), and nationally-representative probability-based surveys of U.S. adults beliefs about civics education (2025) and teaching about contested topics (2024, 2022). Most recently (2025), Anna co-authored a Annenberg Institute at Brown University EdResearch for Action brief for education practitioners and leaders about applied learning.

General press including the Economist, New York Times, and Washington Post, and education journals including EdWeek, Chalkbeat, and 74million, have repeatedly referenced her team’s work including through exclusives. Journals including AERA Open, Economics of Education Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, and Harvard Education Press have published her work. Prior to Anna’s research career, she managed educational programs and partnerships for an international education company and taught high school world history. She earned her BA in History at Yale University and her education master’s and doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.