My name is Dan Adams, and I am very excited to lead Advance CTE’s Data & Research team where I’m responsible for Advance CTE’s data quality and initiatives to promote data-driven decision-making among state Career Technical Education (CTE) leaders and within Advance CTE.
My commitment to education in pursuit of equity and equity in pursuit of social justice was the reason I started my career as a middle school STEM teacher. Most recently, I served as the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission’s Statewide Director of Career Pathways where I collaborated with stakeholders to promote the equity impacts of investments in career pathways. In 2022, based in part on a first-of-its-kind data system I helped build, the Oregon legislature passed and Governor Brown signed Future Ready Oregon into law. The law invested $200 million in education and training, including $17 million for career pathways in Oregon, a nearly tenfold increase.
As Accountability and Data Specialist at the Oregon Department of Education, I authored numerous research briefs and provided invited testimony before the Oregon House and Senate on the equity impact of investments in CTE. Based in part on my findings and testimony, in 2019 the Oregon legislature passed the Oregon School Success Act, which invested an additional $300M in interventions including secondary CTE.
Commitment to education equity and social justice informs my private life as well. As co-chair of Oregon Safe Schools and Communities Coalition, I was honored to be the first signatory to the state’s LGBTQ2SIA+ Student Success Plan which was signed into law in July 2021. As Co-Chair of Seaton Elementary School’s PTO Family Engagement Committee, I was honored to contribute to my family’s home school receiving the Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming School Seal of Excellence in 2023.
I graduated from the University of Notre Dame twice, first with a Bachelor of Science in Science-Business and later with a Master of Education degree and a middle-level science license. I’ve called California, Oregon, Indiana, Texas, Alabama, Ireland, Oregon again, and now the District of Columbia (DC) home.
When I’m not working on more equitable education systems, I’m usually with my wife and son. We can be found on our bikes in and around our home in DC’s historic Shaw neighborhood. If you already checked there, you may also find our bikes locked outside any of DC’s bistros, coffee shops, brew pubs, or museums.
Dan Adams, Data & Research Manager
