NEPC Topic Experts on Education Policy and Policymaking

Following a decade as the Managing Director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, William J. Mathis serves as a Senior Policy Advisor to the center. He was a co-recipient of the national Friend of Public Education award. As the superintendent of schools in Brandon, Vermont, he was a National Superintendent of the Year finalist and a Vermont Superintendent of the Year. A plaintiff and finance expert in the successful school funding lawsuit, the state’s educational system was transformed. He was appointed to the Vermont State Board of Education and served as vice-chair. In earlier work he was Deputy Assistant Commissioner in New Jersey where he directed the state’s assessment system and evaluated the Constitutionality of the school system. Consultant work across the nation followed. He has published or presented research on finance, assessment, accountability, standards, cost-effectiveness, education reform, history, and Constitutional issues. He also serves on various editorial boards and frequently publishes commentaries on educational policy issues. He has co-edited several books and has been featured in several periodicals. He is a board member of the Horace Mann League and sits on his local school board.

Email William J. Mathis at: williamjmathis@gmail.com

Julie Fisher Mead is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Dr. Mead researches and writes about topics related to the legal aspects of education. Her research centers on legal issues related to special education and legal issues raised by various forms of school choice, including charter schools and vouchers.

Email Julie Fisher Mead at: jmead@education.wisc.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

Dana L. Mitra is Professor of Education Policy Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She recently released a book with Teacher’s College Press entitled The Empowered Professor: Breaking the Unspoken Codes of Inequity in Acad­­emia. Dana is founding editor of the International Journal of Student Voice and Co-Editor of The American Journal of Education. She has published over 40 papers on the topics of student voice, civic engagement, and making a difference. The second edition of her textbook—Educational Change and the Political Process has just been published with Routledge. Previous books include Civic Education in the Elementary Grades: Promoting Engagement in an Era of Accountability and Student voice in school reform: Building youth-adult partnerships that strengthen schools and empower youth. 

Email Dana Mitra at: dlm54@psu.edu

NEPC Director Alex Molnar founded NEPC with Kevin Welner in 2010. He is a Research Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and also co-directs the Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU). He has published numerous articles on social and educational policy and practice. For the past three decades, he has studied and written about commercial activities in schools. Molnar has also researched the impact of reduced class size on student achievement and market-based school reforms such as private school vouchers, charter schools, virtual schools, and for-profit schools. Molnar has a B.A. in history, political science, and education; two masters degrees, one in history and one in social welfare; a Specialist's Certificate in educational administration; and a Ph.D. in urban education. His most recent book, Sold Out: How Marketing in School Threatens Children's Well-Being and Undermines their Education, with Faith Boninger, was released in 2015. 

Email Alex Molnar at: nepc.molnar@protonmail.com

John L. Myers is an education policy consultant. He has worked with state policymakers in all 50 states on a broad range of education policy issues. His expertise is on state school finance formulas and methods to determine school funding equity and adequacy. Myers has consulted with the NEPC Price of Opportunity Project (POP) for over five years. His role as consultant includes recommending costing-out strategies and oversight of POP panels from Colorado, North Carolina and Michigan. Myers has served as Vice President of Augenblick, Palaich and Associates consulting firm. Before becoming a consultant Myers was a State Legislator, a Governor’s Policy Director, and Education Program Director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Email John Myers at: jmjmleslie@gmail.com

Yongmei Ni is a professor and the chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah. She also serves as an Assistant Director at the Utah Education Policy Center. Her research examines educational policies related to school choice to improve education access, equity, and effectiveness for all students, and the importance of school leadership and leadership preparation programs. Her policy research has examined various issues related to the effects of charter school policies on racial/ethnic segregation and social stratification, effectiveness, resource allocation, teacher working conditions, teacher and principal labor markets. As part of the Initiative for Systemic Program Improvement through Research in Educational (INSPIRE) Leadership research collaborative team, her recent research explores the quality of leadership preparation programs and their impact on graduate learning and their leadership practices in schools.
 
She has published articles in journals such as Educational Administration Quarterly, American Journal of Education, Economics of Education Review, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, Journal of Educational Administration, and Journal of Educational Finance. She was a 2012-2013 National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer postdoctoral Fellow. In 2013, she received the William J. Davis Award for the most outstanding Educational Administration Quarterly article of the year. She obtained her Ph.D. in Education Policy and Master’s degree in Economics from Michigan State University.

Email Yongmei Ni at: yongmei.ni@utah.edu

Margaret Terry Orr is an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy Division of Fordham University. Previously, she was on the faculty of Bank Street College of Education, where she directed the Future School Leaders Academy, a two-year, dual certification leadership preparation program in partnership with 30+ school districts. In her prior work, she was an associate professor of Educational Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University and a senior research associate at the Academy for Educational Development (now FHI 360).

Dr. Orr has conducted a great number of regional and national studies over the last 35 years on leadership preparation approaches and school and district reform initiatives, and has published numerous books and articles. Her books address effective approaches to leadership preparation and development. Her articles on preparation program effects demonstrated the influence of preparation on leadership practices and school improvement work.

Email Margaret Terry Orr at: morr4@fordham.edu

William R. Penuel is a Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on teacher learning and organizational processes that shape the implementation of educational policies, school curricula, and after-school programs. His research has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, the American Journal of Evaluation, Science Education, and the Journal of the Learning Sciences. He is on the editorial board for Teachers College Record, American Journal of Evaluation, and Cognition and Instruction. Prior to joining the faculty at CU Boulder, Penuel was Director of Evaluation Research at the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International for 13 years.

Email William R. Penuel at: william.penuel@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

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

Anthony Rolle is Dean of the College of Education at the University of South Florida (beginning August 2021). For the past four years he was Dean of the Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Education and Professional Studies at University of Rhode Island. Dr. Rolle believes that his mission is to empower lifelong learners to maximize academic and professional development opportunities.

Previously Dr. Rolle was Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Houston. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the National Education Finance Conference. His current professional interests contribute to knowledge of organizational productivity and public finance equity by investigating their under-cultivated dimensions. Specifically, his theoretical policy research explores and improves relative measures of economic efficiency for public schools, and his empirical policy research explores and applies concepts of vertical equity to efficacy analyses of state education finance mechanisms. Using vertical equity concepts recognizes that socio-demographic differences among communities affect organizational processes; and, does not assume that all public schools have the same expenditure priorities.

Jesse Rothstein is Associate Professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.   His research focuses on education and tax policy, and particularly on the way that public institutions ameliorate or reinforce the effects of children’s families on their academic and economic outcomes. His recent work includes studies of the evaluation of teacher quality using student achievement data; the design of incentive compensation contracts for teachers; the role of family income in the black-white test score gap; and the effects of unemployment insurance on job search.  His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, among other outlets. He has a Ph.D. in economics and a Masters in Public Policy, both from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Email Jesse Rothstein at: rothstein@berkeley.edu

Joydeep Roy is a senior economist at the New York City Independent Budget Office and a visiting professor at Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. His primary research interests include public economics and public policy, economics of education, labor economics, economic development and political economy. His current research focuses on school choice and accountability, school finance and adequacy issues, teacher labor markets and topics in higher education. In recent work, he has looked at the effect of school finance reform in Michigan, high school graduation rates and the phenomenon of early admissions to U.S. colleges and universities. In ongoing research, he is investigating teacher mobility patterns, the relative efficacy of charter schools and the intended and unintended consequences of merit aid programs.

Email Joydeep Roy at:  jr3137@columbia.edu

Christopher Saldaña is an assistant professor of K-12 educational leadership and policy analysis in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chris’s research examines the relationship between K-12 school finance and educational opportunity, focusing particularly on the educational experiences of minoritized and marginalized students. Chris uses multiple and mixed methods in his research. He is a fellow with the National Education Policy Center and received his PhD in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder. 

Email Chris Saldaña at cmsaldana@wisc.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

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

Jack Schneider, Ph.D., the Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a historian and policy analyst who studies the influence of politics, rhetoric, culture, and information in shaping attitudes and behaviors. His research examines how educators, policymakers, and the public develop particular views about what is true, what is effective, and what is important. Drawing on a diverse mix of methodological approaches, he has written about measurement and accountability, segregation and school choice, teacher preparation and pedagogy, and the relationship between research and practice. His current work, on how school quality is conceptualized and quantified, has been supported by the Spencer Foundation and the Massachusetts State Legislature. The author of four books, Schneider is a regular contributor to outlets like the Washington Post and the Atlantic, and co-hosts the education policy podcast Have You Heard. He is also the co-founder and Director of Research for the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment.

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

Paul Shaker is a career educator who has served as teacher, teacher educator, and dean in five of the United States, in Asia, and in Canada at Simon Fraser University of British Columbia where he is professor emeritus and immediate past dean. An alumnus of Ohio State, Shaker has sought to advance the progressive legacy in public schools and higher education through scholarship, leadership and media activism. He has developed and directed independently funded projects such as Friends of Simon, an outreach to immigrant and refugee children that provides university students as after-school tutors. Shaker also hosts Your Education Matters, a television program widely cablecast in British Columbia that is a venue for qualified educators to speak on a range of education topics (see www.youreducationmatters.ca). Scholarly recognition includes his appointment in Kuwait as a Fulbright Senior Scholar for evaluation; the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Outstanding Writing Award for the co-edited volume Teachers and Mentors; and in 2009 the American Educational Research Association Award for Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education for Reclaiming Education for Democracy: Thinking Beyond No Child Left Behind (co-author, Elizabeth Heilman.)

Email Paul Shaker at: pshaker@sfu.ca or see www.paulshaker.com

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

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

Gail L. Sunderman, Ph.D., is co-founder and former director of the Maryland Equity Project at the University of Maryland, a research and policy center focused on access to educational opportunity in Maryland. Her research focuses on educational policy and politics, school reform, and the impact of policy on the educational opportunities for diverse students. Prior to joining University of Maryland, she directed the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center at The George Washington University where she spearheaded the development of the Equity Planning Tool, a research-based instrument designed to assist districts to assess for equity. At the Harvard Civil Rights Project (CRP), she was lead researcher on a five-year study examining the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and how this legislation influenced educational change in states and local school districts. In addition to her scholarly work, Sunderman has served as expert consultant on educational disparities for the U.S. Department of Justice and other organizations. She is a former Fulbright scholar to Afghanistan and received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

Email Gail Sunderman at: glsunderman@yahoo.com

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

Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Educational Policy and Planning Program Area within the Department of Educational Administration and the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin where she also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.

A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99).  In 2007 as a Fulbright Scholar, she also taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.

Valenzuela is also the author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring and Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth.

She also has a volume that is in press based on her national-level work as director of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) titled, Growing Critically Conscious Teachers for Latino/a Youth: A Grounded Social Justice Approach (NY: Teachers College Press).

Valenzuela's research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, race and ethnic relations, education policy, school partnerships, urban education reform, and indigenous education.

Email Angela Valenzuela at: valenz@austin.utexas.edu

Mark Weber is the Special Analyst for Education Policy at the New Jersey Policy Perspective, and a Lecturer at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where he earned his PhD. Weber also works as a public school teacher in Warren Township, NJ. His research projects include the School Finance Indicators Database, the nation’s most comprehensive source of school finance data and analysis. In addition to many journal articles and book chapters, Weber has authored many education policy briefs, including works for the Shanker Institute, the Education Law Center, the Fordham Foundation, and others. Weber’s research concentrates on school choice, school finance, teacher preparation and quality, and arts education, with a particular focus on equity. 

Email Mark Weber at: mark.weber@gse.rutgers.edu

Jennie Whitcomb is the principal of Sacred Heart Preparatory, a Catholic, independent high school in Northern California. Prior to joining Sacred Heart in 2015, she was the Associate Dean of Teacher Education at CU Boulder (2002-2015) and Director of Teacher Education at the University of Denver (1997-2002). Committed to quality teaching and teacher education, her scholarship has focused on teacher learning and teacher education policy and program design. From 2005-2009 she co-edited the Journal of Teacher Education, and in 2014 she was elected to the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education’s Board. Her turn from university teacher preparation to the daily life of a high school affords her opportunities to live her commitments to quality teaching and to fostering a vibrant, affirming school community focused on delivering powerful learning experiences that guide students to find their purpose and to serve their community.

Email Jennie Whitcomb at: jennie.whitcomb@outlook.com