Heather Peske is the Director of Teacher Quality at The Education Trust, a non-profit research and advocacy organization whose mission is to close achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from other youth.

Peske received her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

She is the co-author with Kati Haycock of the report, “Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality.” She is also a co-author of the book, Finders and Keepers: Helping New Teachers Survive and Thrive in Our Schools (Jossey-Bass, 2004) and the lead author on several articles on new teachers’ experiences. Peske recently co-authored a national study on alternative certification, A Difficult Balance: Incentives and Quality Control in Alternative Certification.

Peske is a former member of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as an Editorial Board Member of the Harvard Education Review. She started her career in education as a fourth-grade teacher. She was awarded the distinction of “Teacher of the Year.”