Senior Associate, English

JoAnne Eresh, a senior associate on the Benchmarking Initiative, joined the Achieve staff in March 2001. In this position, she leads the English language arts (ELA) technical assistance work with states. Before joining Achieve's staff, JoAnne worked for two years as a consultant on Achieve's Benchmarking Initiative.

JoAnne has taught writing at the university level and English at private and public high schools in St. Louis, MO, and Fitchburg, MA. She began her work in curriculum design and performance assessment in 1979 under the superintendency of Richard C. Wallace, Jr., and from 1981 to 1994 she was director of the Division of Writing and Speaking for the Pittsburgh (PA) Public Schools. During that time, she directed The Pittsburgh Discussion Model Project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and a component of the CHART network, and later directed the imaginative writing part of the ARTS Propel Project, a joint project with Harvard's Project Zero and the Educational Testing Service.

She was the Pittsburgh district coordinator for the New Standards project and wrote the teachers' guides for the New Standards ELA Portfolios. In 1995, JoAnne was one of the original resident fellows at the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, and she coordinated the New Standards Linking Projects. From 1997 to March 2001, she was coordinator of staff development in Community District Two in New York City, where she was responsible for the hiring, training and coordination of that district's staff development group.

JoAnne holds a bachelor's degree in English from Webster College in St. Louis, MO, and a master's degree in English from the University of Missouri, St. Louis.