Rachel Canter is the Director of Education Policy for the Reinventing America’s Schools project at PPI. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English and History from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 2008, she founded Mississippi First and served as its Executive Director for over 16 years. During her tenure, Canter was the lead advocate of multiple watershed public education initiatives in Mississippi, including the passage and expansion of the state’s pre-K law, the passage of the state’s charter school law, the adoption of new state education standards and assessments, the passage of the Winter-Reed Teacher Loan Repayment program, the passage of the 2022 historic teacher pay raise, and the passage and funding of the 2024 student-centered public school funding formula, to name a few. She is a 2004 Mississippi Delta alumnus of Teach For America and from 2018-2023 served on the national board of the Policy Innovators in Education Network. She lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with her husband Andrew and their daughters, Elizabeth and Katherine.
