Chris D.

Chris D. really misses the classroom.

It’s been a decade, and still she misses the questions, the debate, and the bright exchange of ideas with students. “I didn’t just like being a teacher. I absolutely loved it. I think it was the honor and pleasure of my life,” she says.

A former AP Government teacher in Palm Beach County, Fla., Chris says there’s just one job better than her old one—and it’s the one she has now.

Today, in addition to staffing NEA’s Leaders for Just Schools program, Chris is NEA’s in-house expert on assessment and accountability, working to bridge  the distance between the U.S. Department of Education and NEA’s 51 state affiliates

Her goal? To help “make policy decisions that give educators–in whose shoes I once stood–the respect, autonomy, and sense of professional pride they deserve,” she says. 

In too many places, the burdens of the U.S.’s test-obsessed culture “falls entirely on kids,” she says. “We have kids who don’t get to go to the fourth grade, who don’t get to take that advanced class, who don’t get to graduate because of a score on a single, inequitable, anxiety-inducing test.”

Her mission, on behalf of 3 million NEA members, is to “put those tests in their proper place,” and to advocate for more authentic assessments. “This is the stuff that keeps me up at night!” she says—but it’s also the stuff that keeps her going.

“I want every member leader to know who I am and know that whether it’s 10 or 20 years from now, I’m going to be there for them,” she promises.