NEPC Topic Experts on Economics

W. Steven Barnett is a Board of Governors Professor and Senior Co-Director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers University. His research includes studies of the economics of early care and education including costs and benefits, the long-term effects of preschool programs on children’s learning and development, and the distribution of educational opportunities.

Email W. Steven Barnett at: sbarnett@nieer.org

Website: www.nieer.org

Clive Belfield is a Professor of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York, and the Principal Economist at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. His research interests include education privatization, labor economics, the economics of education, and benefit-cost analysis. Professor Belfield has published widely in the economics of education both in the U.S. and in the U.K. His most recent book is "Economic Evaluation in Education: Cost-Effectiveness and Benefit-Cost Analysis" (co-edited with Levin, McEwan, Bowden and Shand, 2017).

Email Clive Belfield at: clive.belfield@gmail.com

Martin Carnoy is a professor of education and economics at Stanford University where he chairs the International and Comparative Education program in the School of Education. His research explores educational policy and practice in the United States as part of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE).

Email Martin Carnoy at: carnoy@stanford.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 

Dr. David Knight is Associate Professor and co-Director of the Education Policy Analytics Lab at the University of Washington. He also serves as Principal Investigator (PI) of a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, exploring teacher turnover during the COVID-19 era using statewide longitudinal data systems from Texas and Washington. He serves as co-PI of a grant from W. T. Grant Foundation exploring the impacts of school finance reforms and as co-PI of a Lyle Spencer Foundation grant examining the impacts and cost of dual credit education. Dr. Knight’s research focuses on the economics of education and school finance. He studies educational systems through the lens of economic theory and methodologies. His work emphasizes distributive justice, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic finance equity, and policies aimed at reducing inequality and addressing longstanding racial and income-based disparities in educational opportunity. He holds a Ph.D. in educational policy and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Southern California. Dr. Knight previously served as Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso College of Education and as Director of the Center for Education Research and Policy Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Email David Knight at: dsknight@uw.edu

Tammy Kolbe is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Vermont. Her research focuses on the resources and costs associated with effectively implementing policies and programs in PK-16 educational organizations, and how educational resources can be distributed to promote goals for ensuring equal educational opportunities for all students. She frequently works with state and local education agencies on issues related to education funding and costs, particularly with respect to special education programs for students with disabilities. Currently, she is the co-director for the National Consortium for Research on Special Education Funding & Costs (SEF), a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of Education Finance and American Journal of Education, and an expert for the Cost Analysis Standards Project that developed standards for conducting education program cost analysis and economic evaluation. She is the past chair of the American Education Research Association’s (AERA) finance, economics and policy group, and in 2018, she received the AERA’s award for Outstanding Policy Report, for her work on special education costs and state-level special education funding reform.

Dr. Kolbe received her master’s degree in policy analysis and evaluation from The Pennsylvania State University, doctoral degree in educational leadership and policy from the University of Vermont and was a US Department of Education/IES post-doctoral research fellow (at the University of Maryland).

Email Tammy Kolbe at: Tammy.Kolbe@uvm.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

Henry M. Levin is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor, Emeritus of Economics and Education and Director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education. He is also the David Jacks Professor of Higher Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University where he served on the faculty for 31 years with a joint appointment in the School of Education and Department of Economics. Levin is the Founding Director of the Accelerated Schools Project, a national school reform that reached about 1,000 schools in 41 states and Hong Kong. He is also on the Board of the African Diaspora Consortium, an organization focused on research and status of populations of African descent in non-African countries.

Levin has been a Fulbright scholar in Barcelona and in Mexico, Visiting Professor at Beijing University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, and Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. He has also been the President of the Palo Alto, California School Board and the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, and is the author of about 300 articles, and author or editor of 20 books.

Email Henry Levin at: levin@exchange.tc.columbia.edu

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

Jennifer King Rice is Professor of Education Policy and Dean of Graduate Studies and Faculty Affairs in the College of Education at the University of Maryland. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University. Prior to joining the faculty at Maryland, she was a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Dr. Rice’s research draws on the discipline of economics to explore education policy questions concerning the efficiency, equity, and adequacy of U.S. education systems. Her current work focuses on teachers as a critical resource in the education process. She has published more than 50 articles and book chapters. Her authored and edited books include Fiscal Policy in Urban Education; High Stakes Accountability: Implications for Resources and Capacity; and Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes, winner of the 2005 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education book award. As a national expert in education finance and policy, Dr. Rice regularly consults with numerous policy research organizations and state and federal agencies. She was a National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation post-doctoral fellow in 2002-03, and spent a recent sabbatical leave as a Visiting Fellow at the Urban Institute.  She is a past president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy. 

Email Jennifer King Rice at: jkr@umd.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

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