NEPC Topic Experts on School Evaluation

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, PhD, is currently a Professor at Arizona State University. Her research interests include educational policy, educational measurement, and research methods with emphases on quantitative, survey research, and evaluation methods. She is the author of over 100 peer- and editorially-reviewed journal articles and two academic books.

Email Audrey Amrein-Beardsley at: audrey.beardsley@asu.edu

Robert Bifulco is the Associate Dean, Chair, and Professor in the Public Administration and International Affairs department at the Maxwell School, as well as a Senior Research Associate in the Center for Policy Research. His research has focused on the evaluation of educational policies including whole-school reform, school accountability programs, charter schools, magnet schools, and student assignment policies. 

Email Robert Bifulco at: rbifulco@maxwell.syr.edu

Madhabi Chatterji is the Professor Emerita of Measurement, Evaluation, and Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College (TC) where she founded and still directs the Assessment and Evaluation Research Initiative, a center dedicated to promoting meaningful use of assessment-evaluation information to improve equity and the quality of practices and policies in education, psychology and the health professions (AERI, www.tc.edu/aeri). She retired from TC on August 31, 2022, following almost 22 years of service (2001-2022), prior to which she was an assistant professor of educational measurement and research at the University of South Florida (1996-2000), and the supervisor of research and evaluation services at the Pasco County School District, Florida (1988-1995). She is an award-winning and internationally recognized methodologist and educationist.

Email Madhabi Chatterji at mb1434@tc.columbia.edu

Sean P. Corcoran is Associate Professor of Public Policy & Education, and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Corcoran conducts research in applied microeconomics, specifically the economics of education and state and local public finance. His published papers have examined long-run trends in teacher quality, the impact of income inequality and school finance reform on education funding in the United States, the properties of “value-added” measures of teacher effectiveness, and the high school choices of middle school students in New York City. Together with colleagues at Princeton, Columbia, and Seton Hall, he recently fielded several large-scale randomized controlled trials of information supports for school choice in NYC.

Email Sean P. Corcoran at: sean.p.corcoran@vanderbilt.edu 

Edward García Fierros (he, him, el), is Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova University. Fierros is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Education and Counseling at Villanova. Fierros, a first-generation college graduate completed his doctoral degree in Educational Research, Measurement, and Evaluation at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. His expertise includes testing and measurement, diversity and equity in assessment, multiple intelligences theory, and educational policy related to underrepresented students. Fierros has written numerous journal articles and co-authored Multiple Intelligences: Best Ideas from Research and Practice (2004; with Kornhaber and Veenema). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Email Edward García Fierros at: edward.fierros@villanova.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

Jaekyung Lee, PhD, is a professor and former dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. A fellow of the prestigious American Educational Research Association (AERA), Lee is an internationally recognized leader in educational policy, accountability and equity, and international and comparative education. He has a PhD in education from the University of Chicago. Lee is currently a Richard P. Nathan Fellow of the Rockefeller Institute of Government. He was also a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and a fellow of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the recipient of 2007 AERA Raymond B. Cattell Early Career Award and 2015 Western New York Educational Service Council Robert W. Heller Award. Lee is the author of "The Anatomy of Achievement Gaps: Why and How American Education is Losing (But Can Still Win) the War on Underachievement" (Oxford University Press).

Email Jaekyung Lee at: jl224@buffalo.edu

Scott Marion, Ph.D., is the Principal Learning Associate at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment after 10 years as executive director. He is a national leader in conceptualizing and designing innovative and balanced assessment systems and accountability reform to support instructional and other critical uses. Dr. Marion is a member of the National Academy of Education and serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, overseeing the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He coordinates and/or serves on 10 state or district Technical Advisory Committees (TAC) for assessment and accountability.

His research focuses on validity, implementing balanced assessment systems, and the instructional usefulness of assessments. Dr. Marion co-edited the recently published Reimagining Balanced Assessment Systems and co-authored Understanding Instructionally Useful Assessments. Dr. Marion is a co-author of the validity chapter in the forthcoming volume of Educational Measurement and has published dozens of articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder with a concentration in Measurement and Evaluation.  

Email Scott Marion at: Smarion@nciea.org

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

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

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