Burnie Bond

Edith Burnett (Burnie) Bond recently retired as director of programs at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Albert Shanker Institute, where she worked on a range of projects related to the institute’s key issue areas of educational excellence and equity, unions as advocates for quality, and the support of democracy and democratic institutions, both at home and abroad. Previously, she served as assistant director of the American Federation of Teachers’ Educational Issues Department. In that capacity, she monitored educational research on programs and teaching strategies to raise student achievement—especially for “at-risk” students in low-performing schools. She also worked on several related issues, including improving beginning reading instruction, research on and implementation of school turnaround strategies, standards-based reform, Title I, multicultural education, and efforts to improve the reliability and utility of educational research.

She is a former staff assistant in the Office of AFT President Albert Shanker, where she served as coordinator of the AFT’s Education for Democracy Project, a program to promote a rigorous history and civics curriculum, and was formerly the director of research and publications for the International Affairs Department of the AFL-CIO, where she worked on international trade and labor rights issues. She also served on the 1992 Clinton Transition Team at the United States Information Agency.