Background: Anson Jackson is a senior adviser on the Academic and Program Strategy team at Bellwether Education Partners. Anson has devoted more than 17 years to the field of education, focused on educational excellence for all students. As a district and school leader, he has overseen innovative school design, school turnaround, and leadership development.
Anson most recently served as the deputy chief of schools at Uplift Education in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In this role, he oversaw 22 middle and high schools as they navigated teaching and learning through the COVID-19 pandemic. He served as superintendent of Summit Public Schools in the Bay Area from 2018 to 2020. At Summit, he played an integral role in leader development and in the design of the network’s goal-setting framework built through the lens of equity. Anson also served as a managing director at Uplift Education, managing and coaching a cohort of middle school principals serving more than 4,000 students. He set the vision for leader development for middle school principals, oversaw schools implementing the International Baccalaureate’s Middle Years Program, and worked extensively to improve middle school math instruction by partnering with the George W. Bush Institute. Prior to school leadership, Anson served as a math teacher and was a Teach For America Corps member in the Rio Grande Valley.
Anson graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and earned his M.Ed. in educational leadership and policy from Southern Methodist University. He currently lives in Arlington, Texas.
Why I do this work: I firmly believe that a high-quality education is a right for all children, and it is unacceptable that many of our young people historically have not been provided this right based on circumstance, societal inequities, and/or race. I hope my work at Bellwether supporting districts, networks, and school systems will move our country closer to making a high-quality education a reality for all children.
Client segments served: K-12 Schools; Postsecondary/Higher Education; School Districts; CMO/Charter Schools; Nonprofit Organizations
Sample clients: Texas Education Agency, Annenberg Foundation, KIPP TX