Dr. Chandra L. Alston, assistant professor of English Language Arts Education, taught high school English in Chapel Hill before heading to Stanford University, where she received her Ph.D. in Curriculum & Teacher Education. At Stanford, her work focused English Education, pre-service teacher preparation, and in-service teacher professional development. Her dissertation, funded by the National Academy of Education Adolescent Literacy Predoctoral Fellowship, investigated the writing instruction of middle grades teachers with higher value-added scores teaching in predominantly Black students.

She has worked for over a decade preparing secondary English teachers and studying the implications of educational policy reforms on literacy instruction, such as value-added and the Common Core State Standards. She has worked on projects funded by the Spencer Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Her current projects examine the ways English teachers support students' critical, rhetorical analysis skills when engaging nonfiction texts.