NEPC Topic Experts on Research Issues

Michael K. Barbour, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Instructional Design for the College of Education and Health Sciences at Touro University California. He has been involved with K-12 distance, online, and blended learning for over two decades as a researcher, evaluator, teacher, course designer, and administrator. Michael’s research has focused on the effective design, delivery, and support of K-12 distance, online, and blended learning, particularly for students located in rural jurisdictions. This focus includes how regulation, governance, and policy can impact effective distance, online, and blended learning environments. His background and expertise has resulted in invitations to testify before legislative committees and provide expert testimony on legal cases in several states, across Canada, and in New Zealand.  Additionally, he has also consulted on projects in Australia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Sweden.

Email Michael Barbour at: mkbarbour@gmail.com

Gregory Camilli is a professor at Rutgers University. His research interests include the effects of educational programs including Head Start and psychometric issues in educational policy, meta-analysis, and differential item functioning.

Email Gregory Camilli at: camilli@rutgers.edu

Mitchell J. Chang is Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at the University of California, Los Angeles and also holds a joint appointment in the Asian American Studies Department. Chang's research focuses on the educational efficacy of diversity-related initiatives on college campuses and how to apply those best practices toward advancing student learning and democratizing institutions.  In 2006, he was profiled as one of the nation's top ten emerging scholars by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education (formerly Black Issues in Higher Education).

Email Mitch J. Chang at: mjchang@gseis.ucla.edu

Madhabi Chatterji is Professor of Measurement, Evaluation, and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she founded and directs the Assessment and Evaluation Research Initiative (AERI, www.tc.edu/aeri), a center dedicated to promoting meaningful use of assessment and evaluation information, internationally and across disciplines.  Her research and teaching interests lie broadly in assessment-evaluation methodology. Specifically, her work has focused on instrument design, construct validation and validity issues; evidence standards and the evidence debate; a diagnostic model of classroom assessment; and assessment policy issues in K-12 education, health and psychology, including the topics of educational equity and standards based reforms. She is co-editor of Quality Assurance in Education, an international journal in educational evaluation, and is a member of the university-wide Faculty Steering Committee of the Columbia Global Center-South Asia.

Email Madhabi Chatterji at mb1434@tc.columbia.edu

Arnold Danzig runs the doctoral program in educational leadership and is a professor at San Jose State University. He was previously professor of leadership and policy studies and the associate director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University, and served as the director of the Division of Advanced Studies in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at ASU.  He has authored or co-authored numerous articles, books, and reports on administrative leadership and education policy.  He is an editor of the Review of Research in Education sponsored by the American Educational Research Association.

Email Arnold Danzig at Arnold.danzig@sjsu.edu

E-mail Antonia Darder at antonia.darder@lmu.edu

Jaime L. Del Razo is an Assistant Professor of Education at Vassar College. He is interested in researching and writing about issues that confront the continual and accepted forms of oppression that marginalized communities endure in overt and subtle forms in the United States with the goal of changing these conditions forever. Though this research agenda intersects a variety of topics, his current lines of inquiry include (1) Access & Equity for Undocumented Students; (2) Race & Racism; (3) Class & Classism; and (4) Militarization of Schools & Veteran Students. Jaime holds a PhD in Education from UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSE&IS) and a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley.

Email Jaime Del Razo at: jdelrazo@vassar.edu

Margaret Eisenhart is a Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Colorado Boulder. She holds the Bob and Judy Charles Endowed Chair of Education. Her research focuses on the application of anthropological concepts and methods to educational settings. In particular, Dr. Eisenhart has studied culture, gender relations, and women’s experiences in education, as well as women in science and technology. During the past five years, she has been directing outreach programs and research studies related to opportunities for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) among high school students. She is a fellow of the American Anthropological Association and the American Educational Research Association. In 2004 she was elected to the National Academy of Education and currently serves on the Academy’s Board of Directors.

Email Margaret Eisenhart at: margaret.eisenhart@colorado.edu

Kara Finnigan is a professor of education at the University of Michigan's School of Education. Previously, she spent 19 years at the University of Rochester, most recently as Professor of Education Policy and Leadership and as a Distinguished Equity, Inclusion, and Social Transformation Fellow. She has conducted research and evaluations of K-12 educational policies and programs at the local, state, and federal level for more than 25 years. She has written extensively about low-performing schools and high-stakes accountability, district reform, principal leadership, and school choice. Finnigan has published two edited books and her co-authored book Striving in Common: A Regional Equity Framework for Urban Schools was published last year by Harvard Education Press. Her research blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science; employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, including social network analysis and GIS mapping; and focuses on urban school districts. Her recent research focuses on diffusion of research evidence through school systems, connections between housing and education policy to reduce segregation, and equity networks that focus on system change. Finnigan serves on the Rochester Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative’s Policy Committee and was recently invited to testify at a hearing of the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Email Kara Finnigan at: ksfinn@umich.edu

Michal Kurlaender is Professor of Education Policy at the University of California, Davis.  Her research focuses on students’ educational pathways, in particular K-12 and postsecondary alignment, and access to and success in college. Kurlaender works closely with all of California’s public K-12 and higher education sectors. She has recently launched an IES-funded partnership with the California Department of Education to explore college and career readiness in the era of Common Core. She also serves as a co-director of PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education), and is affiliated with the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research, Wheelhouse: The Center for Community College Leadership and Research, and the Centers for the Analysis of Postsecondary Readiness and Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment (both at Teachers College). She received her EdD from Harvard University in 2005. Her work has been published in various academic and policy outlets.

Email Michal Kurlaender at: mkurlaender@ucdavis.edu

Margaret D. LeCompte is Professor Emerita of Education and Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Internationally recognized for her development of qualitative and ethnographic research methods in education, her empirical research has focused on diversity (race, ethnicity, class, culture and language), and on issues of social justice and equity. Published articles include studies of school reform and school organization in low-income and at-risk communities, and of ethnically diverse, gifted, artistically creative, and language minority students, including Native Americans. She won the University Press of America award for Outstanding Research Article in 1994 and the American Educational Studies Association award for Outstanding Book in 1986. An elected Fellow of AERA. the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the American Anthropological Association, LeCompte was awarded the Council on Anthropology and Education’s George and Louise Spindler Award for lifetime contributions to the field of educational anthropology in 2011. Dr. LeCompte was president of the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropology Association from 1983-1985, and served as member of its Executive Board from 2010 to 2016.  She was editor of the American Educational Research Association’s flagship journal, Review of Educational Research, from 2003-2006. Her most recent publications include research on language policy and the politicization and corporatization of higher education, and as well, with Jean Schensul, the second edition of the seven-volume series, The Ethnographer’s Toolkit, (2010-2016).

Email Margaret D. LeCompte at: margaret.lecompte@colorado.edu

Daniel J. Losen, J.D., M.Ed., is Director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA's Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. He has worked at the CRP since 1999, when it was affiliated with Harvard Law School, where he has also been a lecturer on law. His work concerns the impact of federal, state and local education law and policy on students of color. On these and related topics he: conducts law and policy research; publishes books, reports, and articles; has testified before the U.S. Congress and the United Nations; helps draft model legislation; and provides guidance to policymakers, educators and civil rights advocates. His most recent efforts have focused on addressing the school to prison pipeline.  in January 2012, CCRR’s national conference called Closing the School Discipline Gap: Research to Practice, featured new research on remedies from leading scholars from across the nation. In 2014 Losen will be working with Teachers’College Press to publish a book based on this new research. As the Director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies, he has recently published several (co-authored) research and policy studies including:  Out of School and Off Track: The Overuse of Suspensions in American Middle and High Schools, (April, 2013) with Tia Martinez and Eliminating Excessive and Unfair Exclusionary Discipline in Schools Policy Recommendations for Reducing Disparities (March 2014) with Damon Hewitt and Ivory Toldson, on behalf of the Disparities in Discipline Research Collaborative.  As an independent consultant Losen also has extensive experience working with states and large districts across the nation. Before attending law school, Losen taught public school for 10 years and was a founding member of a public alternative school.

Find data on disparities in discipline and links to CCRR's new research at this webtool developed by CCRR: www.schooldisciplinedata.org.

Email Daniel J. Losen at: losendan@gmail.com                     

Andrew Maul is an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara. Maul’s scholarly work focuses on measurement theory, validity, and generalized latent variable modeling. 

Email Andrew Maul at: amaul@education.ucsb.edu

H. Richard Milner IV (also known as Rich) is Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Education and Professor of Education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. His research, teaching, and policy interests concern urban education, teacher education, African American literature, and the social context of education. Professor Milner’s research examines practices and policies that support teacher effectiveness in urban schools. Professor Milner is President of the American Educational Research Association, the largest educational research organization in the world. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Professor Milner’s work has appeared in numerous journals, and he has published seven books. His most recent are: Start where you are but don’t stay there: Understanding diversity, opportunity gaps, and teaching in today’s classrooms (Harvard Education Press, 2010 and 2020, Second Edition), Rac(e)ing to class: Confronting poverty and race in schools and classrooms (Harvard Education Press, 2015) and These kids are out of control: Why we must reimagine classroom management for equity (Corwin Press, 2018).   

Email Rich Milner at: rich.milner@vanderbilt.edu

Gary Miron is professor of evaluation, measurement, and research at Western Michigan University. He has extensive experience evaluating school reforms and education policies. Over the past two decades he has conducted several studies of school choice programs in Europe and in the United States, including nine state evaluations of charter school reforms. In recent years, his research has increasingly focused on the education management organizations (EMOs) and efforts to create systemic change in urban schools in Michigan and rural schools in Louisiana. Prior to coming to Western Michigan University, Dr. Miron worked for 10 years at Stockholm University in Sweden.


Email Gary Miron at: garmiron@gmail.com

Tel. 269-599-7965

Janelle Scott is a Professor and the Robert C. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities at the University of California at Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education, African American Studies Department, and Goldman School of Public Policy. She earned a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of California at Los Angeles’ Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Before earning her doctorate, she was a teacher in Oakland, California. 

Professor Scott’s research investigates how market-based educational reforms affect democratic accountability and equity in public education. She has explored this research program across several policy strands: 1) the racial politics of public education, 2) the politics of school choice, marketization, and privatization, 3) the politics of research evidence on market-oriented reforms, and, 4) the role of elite and community-based advocacy in shaping public education and research evidence utilization. Her work has appeared in several edited books and journals, including the Peabody Journal of Education, Educational Policy, Qualitative Inquiry, the American Educational Research Journal, and the Harvard Educational Review.

She was awarded a Spencer Dissertation Year Fellowship, and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2014, she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Committee on Scholars of Color.  In 2020, she was elected as an AERA Fellow. She is Vice President for Division L (Policy and Politics) of AERA (2019-2022). She is the editor of School choice and diversity: What the evidence says (2005 Teachers College Press), and, with Sonya Horsford and Gary Anderson, author of The Politics of Education in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for democratic schooling (2018 Routledge). 

Email Janelle T. Scott at: jtscott@berkeley.edu

Benjamin R. Shear is an assistant professor in the Research and Evaluation Methodology program at the CU Boulder School of Education. His research and teaching focus on issues related to educational testing and the use of quantitative methods in educational research.

Email Benjamin Shear at: Benjamin.Shear@colorado.edu

Lorrie Shepard is Distinguished Professor and Dean Emerita in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on psychometrics and the use and misuse of tests in educational settings. In addition to technical work on validity theory, standard setting, and statistical models for detecting test bias, her studies evaluating test use have addressed the identification of learning disabilities, readiness screening for kindergarten, grade retention, teacher testing, and effects of high-stakes accountability testing on teaching and learning. Her current work focuses on curriculum-embedded format assessment practices. She served as President of the American Educational Research Association, the National Council on Measurement in Education, and the National Academy of Education.

Email Lorrie Shepard at: lorrie.shepard@colorado.edu

Mary Lee Smith is a Regents' Professor Emeritus of education policy and measurement, statistics, and research methodology at Arizona State University. Dr. Smith's research focuses on school policies, identification of learning disabilities, effects of grade retention, and consequences of high-stakes achievement testing. She received her doctorate at the University of Colorado and is the author of Political Spectacle and the Fate of American Schools (RoutledgeFalmer, 2004).

Email Mary Lee Smith at: MLSmith@asu.edu

Dr. Guillermo Solano-Flores is Professor of Education at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He specializes in educational assessment and the linguistic and cultural issues that are relevant to both international test comparisons and the testing of cultural and linguistic minorities. His research is based on the use of multidisciplinary approaches that use psychometrics, sociolinguistics, semiotics, and cognitive science in combination. He has conducted research on the development, translation, localization, and review of science and mathematics tests. He has been principal investigator in several National Science Foundation-funded projects that have examined the intersection of psychometrics, semiotics, and linguistics in testing. He is the author of the theory of test translation error, which addresses testing across cultures and languages. Also, he has investigated the use of generalizability theory—a psychometric theory of measurement error—in the testing of English language learners and indigenous populations. He has advised Latin American countries on the development of national assessment systems. Also, he has been the advisor to countries in Latin America, Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Northern Africa on the adaptation and translation of performance tasks into multiple languages.

Email Guillermo Solano-Flores at: gsolanof@stanford.edu

Ed Wiley is a senior executive with over 20 years of building, leading, and advising world-class machine learning, AI, and data science teams at companies at stages from startup to Fortune 50. His research interests center around Big Data and advanced statistical analytics, systems of school accountability, teacher quality and compensation, and school choice - initiatives central to the current atmosphere of standards-based testing.

Email Ed Wiley at: ewiley@stanfordalumni.org

Adam York is a Research Associate with the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation (CADRE) at CU Boulder. In this work he draws on experience in qualitative research methods to evaluate educational programs and support services for students. He also contributes to projects of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC). With the NEPC, Adam currently works on the Price of Opportunity project to organize and lead the qualitative data analysis procedures. Adam earned his PhD in educational psychology and learning sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder. He worked in the nonprofit sector as a program director, counselor, and grant writer. He has taught courses at CU Boulder and the University of Colorado Denver in educational foundations, education policy, and human development. Adam earned a master's in community counseling from Lewis and Clark College, and a bachelor's in psychology from Colorado College.

Email Adam York at: Adam.J.York@colorado.edu