NEPC Topic Experts on Tuition Tax Credits

Derek Black is one of the nation’s foremost experts in education law and policy.  He focuses on educational equality, school funding, the constitutional right to education, segregation, and the federal role in schools. He has published over thirty scholarly articles in the nation’s top legal journals, including the flagship journals at Yale, Stanford, New York University, California-Berkeley, Cornell, Northwestern and Vanderbilt. That work has been cited several times in the federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It has also drawn him into litigation disputes over school funding and federal policy, where he has served as an expert witness and consultant.

He is currently a Professor of Law at the University of South Carolina, where he holds the Ernest F. Hollings Chair in Constitutional Law and directs the Constitutional Law Center. He began his career in teaching at Howard University School of Law, where he founded and directed the Education Rights Center. Prior to teaching, he litigated education cases at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.   

Email Derek Black at: blackdw@law.sc.edu

Gene V Glass is Regents' Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He is also currently a Senior Researcher at the National Education Policy Center. Trained originally in statistics and educational psychology, his interests broadened to include psychotherapy research, evaluation methodology, and policy analysis. Dr. Glass has made many important contributions to education statistics, notably his development of "meta-analysis." He applied meta-analysis to his often-cited research on the relationship of class size and achievement. He has published over a dozen books and nearly two hundred articles in scholarly and professional journals.

Email Gene Glass at: gvglass@gmail.com

Luis A. Huerta is an associate professor of education and public policy at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research and scholarship focus on issues of decentralization related to school choice reforms, as well as the impact of school finance inequities on implementing school reform. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Email Luis A. Huerta at: lah2013@tc.columbia.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

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

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