NEPC Topic Experts on Equity and Social Justice

Francesca López, PhD is the Waterbury Chair in Equity Pedagogy at Penn State University, College of Education, Curriculum and Instruction Department. Her research focuses on the ways educational settings promote achievement for marginalized youth.  It has been funded by the American Educational Research Association Grants Program, the Division 15 American Psychological Association Early Career Award, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Email Francesca López at: falopez@psu.edu

Ruth M. López, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Practice at The University of Arizona College of Education. She earned B.A.s in Mexican American Studies and Spanish at The University of Texas at Austin, and PhD in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder. She was previously a Senior Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. Prior to earning her PhD, she was a college outreach counselor in Houston through the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at UT-Austin, and a program coordinator of the Colorado Diversity Initiative at CU-Boulder. Dr. López’s research addresses the social and political contexts that students of color navigate across K-12 schools. Her work examines 1) the intersections of education and immigration policies, 2) college access for Latinx and undocumented students, 3) the experiences of Latinas at Hispanic Serving Institutions. Dr. López’s commitment to educational equity and college access is informed by her multiple identities as the daughter of immigrants from El Salvador and Mexico, first-generation college student/graduate, and mother scholar.

Email Ruth López at: ruthlopez@arizona.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                     

Christopher Lubienski is a professor of education policy at Indiana University and Director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. His research focuses on the intersections of public and private interests in education in areas such as school choice, charter schools, voucher programs, and home-schooling, as well as in education policymaking. He was a post-doctoral Fellow with the National Academy of Education, and with the Advanced Studies Fellowship program at Brown University. More recently, he was named a Fulbright Senior Scholar for New Zealand, where he studies school policies and student enrollment patterns. His current research is on the equity effects of schools’ organizational behavior in “local education markets," and policymakers' use of research evidence.

Email Christopher Lubienski at: clubiens@iu.edu

Catherine A. Lugg is Professor Emerita of education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. Professor Lugg’s research interests include educational history and policy, the influences of media on policymaking, and social history.

Email Catherine A. Lugg at: catherinealugg@gmail.com

Roxana Marachi is Professor of Education at San José State University, where she teaches courses in the Department of Teacher Education and the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership. She received a PhD in Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan in 2003, where she studied the impacts of learning environments on student motivation and behavior in schools and conducted reviews of evaluation research in the fields of school violence prevention and social emotional learning. Her current research interests are focused on strengthening systemic strategies for the prevention of data harms and bridging research-to-practice gaps in the integration of emerging technologies in education.

Email Roxana Marachi at: roxana.marachi@sjsu.edu

Elizabeth J. Meyer is a Professor in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of three books: Queer Justice at School: A Guide for Youth Activists, Allies, and their Teachers (2025, Teachers College Press), Gender, Bullying, and Harassment: Strategies to End Sexism and Homophobia in Schools (2009, Teachers College Press), and Gender and Sexual Diversity in Schools (Springer). Dr. Meyer completed her M.A. at CU Boulder, and Ph.D. at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her recent research has focused on the First Amendment, Title IX implementation, and supports for trans and nonbinary youth. She has discussed her research on FOXNews, National Public Radio, CTV National News (Canada), and other regional media outlets. Professor Meyer received the American Educational Research Association's 2021 award for Distinguished Contributions to Gender Equity in Education Research. She maintains the Gender and Education blog for Psychology Today.

Email Elizabeth Meyer at: Elizabeth.J.Meyer@colorado.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

Michele S. Moses is Professor of Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder. A philosopher by training, Professor Moses has particular expertise in policy disagreements that involve racial, ethnic, and gender diversity and equity; moral and political values; and democracy and the public good; and academic freedom. She has been serving as CU Boulder's Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs since 2019, after serving as Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the CU Boulder School of Education. She has been a Fulbright New Century Scholar and is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Her work has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Higher Education, and Journal of Social Philosophy. In addition, Professor Moses is the author of Living with Moral Disagreement: The Enduring Controversy about Affirmative Action (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Embracing Race: Why We Need Race-Conscious Education Policy (Teachers College Press, 2002), and co-editor of Affirmative Action Matters: Creating Opportunities for Students around the World (Routledge, 2014). A first-generation college graduate, Professor Moses holds a BA from the University of Virginia, an MEd in higher education and student affairs from the University of Vermont, and an MA in Philosophy and PhD in Educational Foundations and Policy from CU Boulder.

Email Michele S. Moses at: michele.moses@colorado.edu

Gary Orfield is Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. His interests include the study of civil rights, urban policy, and minority opportunity. His research methods range from original survey research to analysis of national data sets to political analysis of urban decision-making.

Email Gary Orfield at: orfield@gmail.com

Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

Deborah Palmer is a Professor in the program in Equity, Bilingualism and Biliteracy in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.. A former two-way dual language bilingual teacher in California, she conducts qualitative research using ethnography and discourse analysis in linguistically diverse settings. Her interests include bilingual education policy and politics; critical additive bilingual education; teacher preparation for linguistically/culturally diverse teaching contexts; language, power and identity; and bilingual teacher leadership. In particular, Dr. Palmer examines issues of race and class in bilingual settings, and the impact of critical awareness of teachers for mitigating hegemonic discourses. She explores various ways to open equitable spaces/opportunities for learning for linguistically diverse children in school. She is interested in how bilingual children can be positioned or position themselves in academically powerful ways within a classroom.

Recent publications include:

Palmer, D., & Henderson, K. (2016) Dual language tracking and teacher discourses on emergent bilingual students. International Multilingual Research Journal, 10(1), 17-30.

Palmer, D. & Martínez, R. (2016) Developing biliteracy: What do teachers really need to know about language? Research Commentary, Language Arts 93(5), 379-385.

Fitzsimmons-Doolan, S., Palmer, D. & Henderson, K. (2015). Language ideologies and district-wide dual language program implementation. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

Laurence Parker is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy at the University of Utah. He has developed and taught classes on critical race theory and education policy issues and has concentrated his research and teaching in this area as it relates to equity and education, both K-12 and higher education. His most recent publication is a co-authored book chapter that appears in Facing Accountability in Education: Democracy & Equity at Risk (edited by Christine Sleeter, 2007, Teachers College Press), and he recently edited vols. 29 & 31 of the Review of Research in Education for AERA. Parker is associated with the Utah Education Policy Center.

Email Laurence Parker at: laurence.parker@utah.edu

Thomas M. Philip is a Professor and Faculty Director of Teacher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Philip’s research focuses on how teachers make sense of power and hierarchy in classrooms, schools, and society. He is interested in how teachers act on their sense of agency as they navigate and ultimately transform classrooms and institutions toward more equitable, just, and democratic practices and outcomes. His most recent scholarship explores the possibilities and tensions that emerge with the use of artificial intelligence and digital learning technologies in the classroom, particularly discourses about the promises of these tools with respect to the significance or dispensability of teacher pedagogy.

Email Thomas M. Philip at: tmp@berkeley.edu

Joe Polman is a Professor in Learning Sciences and Science Education, as well as Associate Dean for Research, in the School of Education at University of Colorado Boulder. He designs and studies project-based learning environments for youth in schools and community programs. He focuses on learning and identity development connected to practices of science, literacy and journalism, with a particular focus on fostering more engaged democratic participation. He is an Executive Editor of Cognition and Instruction, serves on the editorial board of Journal of the Learning Sciences, and is on the board of the International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Email Joe Polman at: joseph.polman@colorado.edu

Dr. Regina Umpstead Pratel is Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Evaluation, and Organizational Development in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville.  Her expertise is in educational law and policy studies. She joined the Price of Opportunity Project in 2022, focusing primarily on the work in Michigan. Dr. Umpstead Pratel earned her J.D. from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Michigan State University. 

Email Regina Umpstead at: regina.umpstead@louisville.edu

Gloria M. Rodriguez (MPA, Columbia University; Ph.D. Education, Stanford University) is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Her research centers on educational resource allocation and leadership from a critical, social justice perspective and policy issues affecting Latina/o students and other minoritized populations.

Email Gloria Rodriguez at: gmrodriguez@ucdavis.edu

John Rogers is a professor in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the Director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA). He also serves as the faculty co-director of UCLA’s Principal Leadership Institute. Rogers studies public engagement and community organizing as strategies for equity-focused school reform and democratic renewal. He draws extensively on the work of John Dewey to explore the meaning of, and possibilities for, democratic education today. John Rogers is the co-author (with Jeannie Oakes) of Learning Power: Organizing for Education and Justice (2006) and co-editor (with Marion Orr) of Public Engagement for Public Education: Joining Forces to Revitalize Democracy and Equalize Schools (2010). Professor Rogers received his Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University and his B.A. in Public Policy and African American Studies from Princeton University.

Email John Rogers at: rogers@gseis.ucla.edu

Beth C. Rubin, Ph.D. is professor of education at Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. In her work, she uses a critical, sociocultural approach to investigate how young people develop, both as learners and as citizens, amid the interwoven contexts of classroom, school, and community, with particular attention to the ways that these settings are shaped by historical and structural inequalities. Her work appears in a variety of journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, the Harvard Educational Review, Curriculum Inquiry, Equity and Excellence in Education, the Urban Review, and others. Her most recent book is Making Citizens: Transforming Civic Learning for Diverse Social Studies Classrooms (Routledge, 2012).

Email Beth Rubin at: beth.rubin@gse.rutgers.edu

Kenneth Saltman is a Professor of Educational Policy Studies at University of Illinois at Chicago. His interests include the political economy and cultural politics of public school privatization. His work also explains how the privatization movement in education is part of the broader movement to undermine public democratic power and expand global corporate power.

He is the author and editor of numerous books on educational policy and politics including Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools, The Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy, The Edison Schools, Education as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, The Failure of Corporate School Reform, The Politics of Education: A Critical Introduction, and Toward a New Common School Movement.  His most recent book (2016) is Scripted Bodies: Corporate Power, Smart Technologies, and the Undoing of Public Education.

Email Kenneth Saltman at: ksaltman@uic.edu 

Carrie Sampson, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University. Her scholarship focuses on how educational leadership and policymaking at the K-12 level influences equity and social justice for minoritized youth and their families. Dr. Sampson has conducted research on school desegregation policies. Her most recent line of research is centered at the school district level with an emphasis on governance, particularly the role of school boards, community advocacy, decentralization, and school choice policies. Her methodological expertise is in case study and qualitative methods. Dr. Sampson’s research on school boards was recently funded by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Email Carrie Sampson at: csampso4@asu.edu

Marisa Saunders is associate director for research at UCLA’s Center for Community Schooling. Her primary areas of research focus on K-12 transformation efforts aimed to address long-standing educational inequalities. She has conducted extensive research that explores the potential and challenges associated with college and career pathways. Marisa has authored a number of publications and books including Beyond Tracking: Multiple Pathways to College, Career, and Civic Participation and Learning Time: In Pursuit of Educational Equity.

Email Marisa Saunders at: m.saunders@ucla.edu

Ron Scapp is the founding director of the Graduate Program of Urban and Multicultural Education at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx where he is professor of humanities and teacher education. He is currently the director of program development at the College, and is President of the National Association for Ethnic Studies. He is also serving as a member of the International Committee for Kappa Delta Pi and a member of United Federation of Teachers policy board for the NYC Teachers Center.  He has written on a variety of topics—from popular culture to education, from social and political philosophy to art criticism. 

His recent books include, Managing to Be Different: Educational Leadership as Critical Practice (Routledge) and Living With Class: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture, co-edited with Brian Seitz (Palgrave Macmillan). He has collaborated with others on different projects, most notably with cultural critic and author bell hooks [sic]. He is currently working on a book about education and the culture of reform and is co-editor with Kenneth J. Saltman of the Routledge series, Positions: Education, Politics and Culture. He is editor of the journal Ethnic Studies Review, and is a founding member of Group Thought, a philosophy collective based in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Email Ron Scapp at: ron.scapp@mountsaintvincent.edu

Kathy Schultz is Professor of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education and with the Renée Crown Wellness Institute. She was Dean of the School of Education from 2017-2023 following her appointment as Dean of the School of Education at Mills College in Oakland, California from 2010-2016. She served as professor and director of the teacher education program at the University of Pennsylvania from 1997-2010. During that time, she was the faculty director of the Philadelphia Writing Project and served on the Empowerment Board (School Board) of the Chester Upland School District. 

Her scholarly work has focused on the research, development, and dissemination of practices that support new and veteran teachers working with marginalized populations in high poverty areas. Her two books, Listening: A framework for teaching across differences and Rethinking classroom participation: Listening to silent voices address these issues. Her most recent book, Distrust and educational change: Overcoming barriers to just and lasting reform, about the role of distrust in educational reform, draws on her work in Oakland, as a school board member in Chester, PA, and leader of professional development in international settings. One of her current projects addresses dignity, teachers, and teaching.

Email Katherine Schultz at: Katherine.Schultz@colorado.edu

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

Robert Shand is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Leadership at American University and an affiliated researcher with the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. A former high school economics and government teacher, his interests lie at the intersection of research, policy and practice. His current research focuses on teacher improvement through collaboration and professional development and how schools and teachers use data from economic evaluation and accountability systems to make decisions and improve over time. Recent work at CBCSE has emphasized the unique opportunities and methodological challenges of evaluating complex partnership programs, including the university-school-community partnership Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem, and the comprehensive student support program, City Connects. He is a co-author of the third edition of Economic Evaluation in Education: Cost-Effectiveness and Benefit-Cost Analysis, and he has contributed to publications in the American Journal of Evaluation, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Email Robert Shand at: rshand@american.edu

Christine Sleeter is Professor Emerita in the College of Education at California State University Monterey Bay, where she was a founding faculty member. Her research focuses on anti-racist multicultural education, the impact of ethnic studies on students, and the preparation of teachers for racially and ethnically diverse schools.

Email Christine Sleeter at: csleeter@gmail.com

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

Jamy Stillman is an Associate Professor of Education in the division of Educational Equity and Cultural Diversity at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores the factors that shape teachers’ capacities to deliver equity-oriented, responsive instruction in high-poverty schools serving minoritized youth, especially Spanish-English bilingual students. Using qualitative methods, Jamy focuses primarily on two factors—education policy (e.g. high-stakes accountability policies and standards-based reform) and features of university teacher education—to generate understandings about pre-service and practicing teachers’ learning and work across contexts, and the implications of this work and learning for culturally and linguistically diverse students’ opportunities to learn. Jamy is also becoming increasingly interested in questions surrounding the preparation of urban teacher educators.

Email Jamy Stillman at: Jamy.Stillman@colorado.edu

P. L. Thomas, Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is a former column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English), current series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Brill), and author of Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination: Essays Exploring What ‘Teaching Writing’ Means (IAP, 2019) and How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (IAP, in press). NCTE named Thomas the 2013 George Orwell Award winner. He co-edited the award-winning (Divergent Book Award for Excellence in 21^st Century Literacies Research) volume Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America (Brill, 2018). Follow his work @plthomasEdD and the becoming radical (http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/).

Email P.L. Thomas at: paul.thomas@furman.edu

Tina Trujillo is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA and her M.A. in Education from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a former urban public school teacher, school reform consultant, and educational evaluator. Dr. Trujillo uses tools from political science and critical policy studies to study the political dimensions of urban district reform, the instructional and democratic consequences of high-stakes testing and accountability policies for students of color and English Learners, and trends in urban educational leadership. Her work is published in a range of journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, Journal of Educational Administration, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She is the co-editor of Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (2016, Information Age Publishing, with William Mathis).

Email Tina Trujillo at: trujillo@berkeley.edu

Karolyn Tyson is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Georgetown University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1999. Her main fields of interest are sociology of education, social psychology, and social inequality. Dr. Tyson's publications have addressed such topics as how schools reproduce social inequality and the role of the schooling experience in the development of attitudes toward school. Her overall program of research centers on understanding how cultural, structural, and individual-level factors affect school achievement and contribute to unequal educational outcomes.

Email Karolyn Tyson at: kt801@georgetown.edu

Michelle Renée Valladares is Associate Director of the National Education Policy Center and Faculty Affiliate of the CU Boulder School of Education. She leads and partners in a series of projects that aim to increase educational opportunities for all students. This includes serving as CO-PI of the Research Hub for Youth Organizing and the Price of Opportunity Project, as the media and policymaker contact for NEPC, and as a member of the Schools of Opportunity Project leadership.  Michelle leads a Research Hub study of youth organizing and &youth development in California and supervises a research practice partnership with the Cuba Independent School District in New Mexico. For the Price of Opportunity, Michelle leads our partnerships with school finance advocates, contributes to research design, analysis and writing and manages the project team. Michelle also co-leads the Caminos de Bilinguismo partnership with Boulder Valley School District. Michelle has conducted original research on indicator systems, youth and adult education organizing, parent and family engagement, and school turnaround. Michelle has a PhD in education from the University of California, Los Angeles.  

Email Michelle Renée Valladares at: michelle.valladares@colorado.edu

Professor Kevin Welner teaches educational policy and law at the CU Boulder School of Education. He’s also the director of the National Education Policy Center, which works to build bridges between the research world and the broader public. Kevin has authored or edited a dozen books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, including a casebook for law school students about education law, and a book called Closing the Opportunity Gap, which is the foundation for his recent work about the importance of improving children’s opportunities to learn inside and outside of school, including the Price of Opportunity Project. Welner has been recognized by the American Educational Research Association as a Fellow and been given the AERA's Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award (in 2017), Early Career Award (in 2006), Palmer O. Johnson Award (best article in 2004). The Horace Mann League gave Welner its Outstanding Public Educator Award in 2018. He received his B.A. in Biological Sciences from UCSB and his J.D. and Ph.D. from UCLA.

Email Kevin G. Welner at: kevin.welner@colorado.edu

Dr. Terrence G. Wiley is President of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC, and he serves as Special Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership and Graduate School, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. He is also Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, where he served as Executive Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education and Director of the Division of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies. He has also been serving as a Visiting Professor in the School of Foreign Languages for Renmin (Peoples’) University of China’s International Programs.

Professor Wiley’s teaching and research have focused on educational and applied linguistics, concentrating on educational language policies; language diversity and immigrant integration; teaching English as a second and international language; bilingualism, literacy and biliteracy studies; and bilingual, heritage and community language education. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Education with an emphasis in Linguistics, has two Master’s degrees, in Linguistics and Asian Studies, and a B.A. in History. He has won numerous awards for scholarship, teaching, and service.

Professor Wiley’s scholarly articles and reviews have appeared in the Modern Language Journal, the TESOL Quarterly, Language in Society, the International Journal of Sociology of Language, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the Bilingual Research Journal, Educational Policy, and Teachers College Record.

Among his books are: Handbook of Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages: Research, Policy, and Practice (co-editor, Routledge, 2014). The Education of Language Minority Immigrants in the United States (co-editor, 2009, Multilingual Matters), Literacy and Language Diversity in the United States, 2nd Ed (author, 2005, Center for Applied Linguistics), Ebonics in the Urban Education Debate, 2nd Ed (co-editor, 2005, Multilingual Matters), Professor Wiley has also published numerous chapters in volumes published by Cambridge and Oxford university presses, Blackwell, Taylor and Francis, Routledge, Sage, John Wiley & Sons, Lawrence Erlbaum, John Benjamins, Mouton, UNESCO, the University of Hawaii Press, and Professor Wiley's editorial service includes co-founding and co-editing the Journal of Language, Identity and Education (Routledge, Taylor & Francis), and the International Multilingual Research Journal (Routledge, Taylor & Francis), guest co-editing the International Journal of the Sociology of Language and Bilingual Research Journal, and AERA’s Review of Research in Education (in press, 2014). He has also served on numerous editorial boards, including the TESOL Quarterly, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Language Planning, and Language Policy,

Professor Wiley’s research collaborations have included projects with UCLA’s National Heritage Language Resource Center; ASU’s Confucius Institute in partnership with Sichuan University; and UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, and he serves as Fellow with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In addition to his work in China, Professor Wiley and has done visiting professorships and lectured at universities in Africa, East and South Asia, Europe and the UK, North, South, and Central America, Australia, and New Zealand. He is also organizer of the international Language Policy Research Network of AILA (Association Internationale de la Linguistique Appliquée).

Professor Wiley is the 2014 recipient of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award.

Email Terrence G. Wiley at: twiley@CAL.org

Terri S. Wilson is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on the philosophical foundations of education policy, including issues raised by school choice, marketization and parent engagement. Her current research explores how to balance the interests of families in choosing distinctive schools—especially ones that affirm ethnic, linguistic or cultural identities—against arguments for a common, integrated school system. She received her PhD in Philosophy and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and was a 2012-2014 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

Email Terri S. Wilson at: Terri.Wilson@colorado.edu

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