Halley Potter is a senior fellow and director of PK-12 education policy at The Century Foundation, where she works to advance public policy solutions for addressing educational inequality. She is an expert on school integration, preschool equity, charter schools, and college access. Her work at TCF includes producing original research as well as helping to lead the Bridges Collaborative, a national network of school systems and housing organizations committed to advancing integration.
Halley is coauthor, with Richard D. Kahlenberg, of A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education (Teachers College Press, 2014), which examines two themes behind the original vision for charter schools as set out by teacher union leader Albert Shanker: empowering teachers as leaders and innovators and bringing together students from different racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Her writing has also been published in numerous news outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, US News, and Educational Leadership, and she has appeared on MSNBC and public radio. She has testified before lawmakers as well as provided technical assistance and presented research to school superintendents, principals, school board members, and teachers across the country.
In 2014, Halley co-founded the Diverse Charter Schools Coalition, a grassroots advocacy and membership group supporting high-quality racially and economically integrated public charter schools. Prior to joining The Century Foundation, Halley taught at Two Rivers Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., a K–8 school that uses the Expeditionary Learning model to guide students in semester-long, in-depth investigations of science and social studies topics. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in religious studies and is an alumnus of the Coro Leadership New York program.
