NEPC Topic Experts on Private Schools

T. Jameson Brewer Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of North Georgia. His teaching experience spans the middle school, high school, undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels. Broadly conceptualized, his research focuses on the impact of privatization and marketization of public education by way of school vouchers, charter schools, alternative teacher certification, homeschooling, and venture philanthropy. Follow him on Twitter: @tjamesonbrewer

Email T. Jameson Brewer at: jameson.brewer@ung.edu

Peter W. Cookson, Jr. co-leads LPI’s Equitable Resources and Access team and provides leadership for several equity initiatives. In addition to teaching sociology at Georgetown University, he co-leads the American Voices Project, a joint research project of Stanford University, Princeton University, and the American Institutes for Research. Most recently, he was Managing Director of the think tank Education Sector and founded The Equity Project at the American Institutes for Research. He is the author of 16 books and numerous articles on education and inequality, social stratification, school choice, and 21st century education. Dr. Cookson has a Ph.D. in the Sociology of Education from New York University, an M.A. in American History from New York University, an M.A.R. from the Yale Divinity School, and a B.A. in History from New York University.

Email Peter W. Cookson, Jr. at: pcookson@learningpolicyinstitute.org

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

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

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

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