NEPC Topic Experts on Politics, Policy, and School Practices

Frank Adamson is an Associate Professor of Education Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He studies relationships between political and economic systems and education equity and opportunity in the U.S. and internationally. Dr. Adamson’s research areas include education finance, education privatization, advocacy, and the legal right to education. His latest volume, Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education, analyzes the application of international human rights law in education. On the Price of Opportunity project that studies the actual cost for education systems to realize their role as great equalizers, he studies how stakeholders engage in “opportunity dreaming” and social sector supports within and outside of schools. Dr. Adamson has written about the impact of charter school reform on students and communities in both Oakland and New Orleans, teacher salary differences in New York and California labor markets, has completed studies for the USDOE, OECD, IEA, and UNESCO, including analyses of PISA and TIMSS, and has produced 4 books and over 50 publications. Dr. Adamson holds an MA in Sociology and a Ph.D. in International Comparative Education, both from Stanford University.   

Email Frank Adamson at: adamson@csus.edu

Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He also holds Distinguished Professor appointments at the University of Manchester and Northeast Normal University in China.  A former elementary and secondary school teacher and past-president of a teachers union, he has worked with educational systems, governments, universities, unions, and activist and dissident groups throughout the world to democratize educational research, policy, and practice.

Professor Apple has written extensively on the politics of educational reform, on the relationship between culture and power, and on education for social justice.  Among his recent books are: The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education; The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology of Education; Global Crises, Social Justice, and Education; and most recently Knowledge, Power, and Education; and Can Education Change Society?  His books and articles have won numerous awards and have been translated into many languages.

Professor Apple has been selected as one of the fifty most important educational scholars in the 20th Century.  His books Ideology and Curriculum and Official Knowledge were also selected as two of the most significant books on education in the 20th Century.

He has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Educational Research Association, the UCLA Medal for "Outstanding Academic Achievement," and a number of honorary doctorates by universities throughout the world.

Email Michael W. Apple at: apple@education.wisc.edu

Leonard Baca is professor emeritus of education and former director of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education (www.colorado.edu/education/BUENO) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Baca is a member of several professional organizations including the National Association of Bilingual Education, Teachers of English as a Second Language, the Council for Exceptional Children, the National Association for Multicultural Education and the American Educational Research Association. He served on the editorial boards of several journals including the Bilingual Research Journal, Multicultural Perspectives, and Remedial and Special Education.

Email Leonard Baca at: leonard.baca@colorado.edu

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

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

Gregory Camilli is a professor at Rutgers University. His research interests include the effects of educational programs including Head Start and psychometric issues in educational policy, meta-analysis, and differential item functioning.

Email Gregory Camilli at: camilli@rutgers.edu

Maia Cucchiara is an Associate Professor of Urban Education at Temple University. A former teacher, she holds a joint Ph.D. in Education and Sociology. Her research uses qualitative methods, especially ethnography, to examine people’s lived experiences with education policy in the urban context. Dr. Cucchiara has conducted research on education and urban revitalization, school choice, parenting education, and urban school “reform.” Her latest work, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on efforts to improve school culture in urban high schools. Dr. Cucchiara is the author of Marketing Schools, Marketing Cities:  Who Wins and Who Loses When Schools Become Urban Amenities (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and is currently working on a book about innovative urban high schools.

Email Maia Cucchiara at: maia.cucchiara@temple.edu

Arnold Danzig runs the doctoral program in educational leadership and is a professor at San Jose State University. He was previously professor of leadership and policy studies and the associate director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University, and served as the director of the Division of Advanced Studies in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education at ASU.  He has authored or co-authored numerous articles, books, and reports on administrative leadership and education policy.  He is an editor of the Review of Research in Education sponsored by the American Educational Research Association.

Email Arnold Danzig at Arnold.danzig@sjsu.edu

E-mail Antonia Darder at antonia.darder@lmu.edu

Amy Farley is an assistant professor in the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies program within the School of Education at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses broadly on equity in P-20 education systems and how consequential K-12 and postsecondary policies impact educational opportunity. She pays particular attention to school and university reform; high-stakes policies, including those regarding data use, measurement, and assessment; and the disparate impact of policies on minoritized student and teacher populations. Before becoming a faculty member, Amy worked as a K-12 educator and a Strategic Data Fellow through Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research, where she worked closely with state and local agencies to conduct research and provide technical assistance regarding the implementation of education policies and reforms related to standards, educator evaluation, and student assessment.

Email Amy Farley at: farleyay@ucmail.uc.edu

Kara Finnigan is a professor of education at the University of Michigan's School of Education. Previously, she spent 19 years at the University of Rochester, most recently as Professor of Education Policy and Leadership and as a Distinguished Equity, Inclusion, and Social Transformation Fellow. She has conducted research and evaluations of K-12 educational policies and programs at the local, state, and federal level for more than 25 years. She has written extensively about low-performing schools and high-stakes accountability, district reform, principal leadership, and school choice. Finnigan has published two edited books and her co-authored book Striving in Common: A Regional Equity Framework for Urban Schools was published last year by Harvard Education Press. Her research blends perspectives in education, sociology, and political science; employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, including social network analysis and GIS mapping; and focuses on urban school districts. Her recent research focuses on diffusion of research evidence through school systems, connections between housing and education policy to reduce segregation, and equity networks that focus on system change. Finnigan serves on the Rochester Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative’s Policy Committee and was recently invited to testify at a hearing of the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Email Kara Finnigan at: ksfinn@umich.edu

Bruce Fuller is professor of education and public policy, University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on early learning in diverse families and how institutions struggle to serve pluralistic communities. His forthcoming book is After the State and Market, a study of successful, decentralizing organizations (University of Chicago Press). Fuller is author of Standardized Childhood and Government Confronts Culture. A former research sociologist at the World Bank, he taught at Harvard University before returning to California.

Email Bruce Fuller at: b_fuller@uclink4.berkeley.edu

Patricia Gándara is a Research Professor at the Graduate School of Education at UCLA. Her professional interests in graduate teaching include education policy/education reform, social context of learning, learning and assessment, and educational equity/bilingual and multicultural education. She is currently the co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles. She was President of the Sociology of Education Association in 1995 and Chair of the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute in 1995. She has also been Chair of the Program Committee for Division G and Chair of the Hispanic SIG of the American Educational Research Association.

Email Patricia Gándara at: pcgandara@gmail.com

Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

Preston Green is the John and Carla Klein Professor of Urban Education at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. He is also a professor of educational leadership and law at the University of Connecticut.

Before coming to the University of Connecticut, he was the Harry Lawrence Batschelet II Chair Professor of Educational Administration at Penn State, where he was also a professor of education and law and the program coordinator of Penn State's educational leadership program. In addition, Dr. Green was the creator of Penn State's joint degree program in law and education. Further, he ran the Law and Education Institute at Penn State, a professional development program that teaches, administrators, and attorneys about educational law.

Dr. Green has written four books and numerous articles and book chapters pertaining to educational law. He primarily focuses on the legal and policy issues pertaining to educational access and school choice. He holds an Ed.D. in Educational Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University and a J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law.

Email Preston Green at: preston.green@uconn.edu

Kris D. Gutiérrez is Professor of Language, Literacy and Culture. She was most recently a professor of Learning Sciences/Literacy and the Inaugural Provost’s Chair, University of Colorado, Boulder and Professor Emerita of Social Research Methodology at GSE&IS at UCLA. Professor Gutiérrez is a national leader in education, with an emphasis in literacy, learning sciences, and interpretive and design-based approaches to inquiry. Gutiérrez is a member of the National Academy of Education and is the Past President of the American Educational Research Association and the National Conference on Research on Language and Literacy. Gutiérrez was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a member of the National Board for the Institute of Education Sciences where she served as Vice Chair.

Her research examines learning in designed learning environments, with attention to students from non-dominant communities and English Learners. Her work on Third Spaces examines the affordances of hybrid and syncretic approaches to literacy, new media literacies, and STEM learning and the re-mediation of functional systems of learning. Her work in social design experiments seeks to leverage students’ everyday concepts and practices to ratchet up expansive forms of learning. Professor Gutiérrez's research has been published widely in premier academic journals and is a co-author of Learning and Expanding with Activity Theory.

Gutiérrez has received numerous awards for her empirical work, including the 2014, Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research – Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2014 Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education, (Division G, AERA), the 2005 AERA Division C Sylvia Scribner Award for influencing the field of learning and instruction. She was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, an AERA and NEPC Fellow, and an Osher Fellow, Exploratorium Museum of Science. Gutierrez received the AERA Hispanic Research in Elementary, Secondary, or Postsecondary Education Award and the Inaugural Award for Innovations in Research on Diversity in Teacher Education, Division K (AERA). She served on the U.S. Department of Education Reading First Advisory Committee and a member of President Obama’s Education Policy Transition Team. Professor Gutiérrez was also identified as one of the 2009 Top 100 influential Hispanics.

Email Kris Gutiérrez at: gutierrkd@berkeley.edu

Julian Vasquez Heilig is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Western Michigan University. His research and practice are primarily focused on K-12 and higher education curriculum, policy, and leadership that impacts equity and innovation. He was recently selected as a recipient of the 2022 Linda C. Tillman Social & Racial Justice Award— which recognizes an academic who demonstrates outstanding leadership in furthering the values of “diversity, equity, and social justice in PK-20 educational organizations.” He obtained his Ph.D. in Education Administration and Policy Analysis and a Masters in Sociology from Stanford University. He also holds a Masters of Higher Education and a Bachelor’s of History and Psychology from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Email Julian Vasquez Heilig at: j.vasquezheilig@wmich.edu

Emily M. Hodge (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Her work uses qualitative methods and social network analysis to understand decision-making about education policy, with the goals of improving the equitable distribution of high-quality learning opportunities and the status of teaching as a profession. Recent projects have explored how teachers negotiated the tension between standardization and differentiation in the context of the Common Core State Standards and the varied strategies state education agencies are using to support standards implementation. Hodge is a recipient of a Small Research Grant and a Conference Grant from the Spencer Foundation. She is the Co-Editor of the American Journal of Education. Her research appears in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Policy, Review of Research in Education, and AERA Open, among others. 

Email Emily Hodge at: hodgee@mail.montclair.edu

Dr. Jennifer Jellison Holme is an Associate Professor of Educational Policy and Planning at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the politics and implementation of educational policy, with a particular focus on the relationship between school reform, equity, and diversity in schools. Her specific areas of research include school desegregation policy, high stakes testing, and school choice policy. She earned her B.A. in Sociology from UCLA, her Ed.M. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her Ph.D. in Urban Schooling from UCLA.

Email Jennifer Holme at: jholme@austin.utexas.edu

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

Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor of education policy at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Her research uses sociological and critical theories to examine how market-based ideas in PK-12 and higher education shape inequality, opportunity, and democracy in the U.S. She is currently studying school choice policy and school leaders' behavioral responses to competition; choice and decision-making in higher education; and teacher job choices, recruitment, and retention.

Email Huriya Jabbar at hjabbar@usc.edu

Robert Kim is the Executive Director of Education Law Center, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving public education and fostering equitable educational opportunity for students in the United States. His expertise includes most facets of education law and policy related to pre-K-12 and postsecondary education in the United States, civil rights litigation and advocacy, and constitutional law.

Email Robert Kim at: robertkimnyc@gmail.com

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

Dr. Kevin Kumashiro (https://www.kevinkumashiro.com) is the founding chair of the national network, Education Deans for Justice and Equity (EDJE).  He is an internationally recognized expert on educational policy, school reform, teacher preparation, and educational equity and social justice, with a wide-ranging list of accomplishments and awards as a scholar, educator, leader, and advocate.  Dr. Kumashiro is the former Dean of the Schools of Education at the University of San Francisco and Hofstra University, and is the award-winning author or editor of ten books, including Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning toward Social Justice, and most recently, Surrendered: Why Progressives are Losing the Biggest Battles in Education. His recent awards include the 2016 Social Justice in Education Award from the American Educational Research Association, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling.

Email Kevin K. Kumashiro at: kevin@kevinkumashiro.com

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

Margaret D. LeCompte is Professor Emerita of Education and Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Internationally recognized for her development of qualitative and ethnographic research methods in education, her empirical research has focused on diversity (race, ethnicity, class, culture and language), and on issues of social justice and equity. Published articles include studies of school reform and school organization in low-income and at-risk communities, and of ethnically diverse, gifted, artistically creative, and language minority students, including Native Americans. She won the University Press of America award for Outstanding Research Article in 1994 and the American Educational Studies Association award for Outstanding Book in 1986. An elected Fellow of AERA. the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the American Anthropological Association, LeCompte was awarded the Council on Anthropology and Education’s George and Louise Spindler Award for lifetime contributions to the field of educational anthropology in 2011. Dr. LeCompte was president of the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropology Association from 1983-1985, and served as member of its Executive Board from 2010 to 2016.  She was editor of the American Educational Research Association’s flagship journal, Review of Educational Research, from 2003-2006. Her most recent publications include research on language policy and the politicization and corporatization of higher education, and as well, with Jean Schensul, the second edition of the seven-volume series, The Ethnographer’s Toolkit, (2010-2016).

Email Margaret D. LeCompte at: margaret.lecompte@colorado.edu

Bethy Leonardi, PhD is codirector of A Queer Endeavor (aqueerendeavor.org) and an associate professor of Educational Foundations, Policy, & Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. In her research she focuses on the complex relationship between policy and practice, and specifically, policies that rub up against the status quo. 

Email Bethy Leonardi at: Bethy.Leonardi@colorado.edu

Dr. Francesca López is the Jim and Georgia Thompson Distinguished Professor of Education in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison . She began her career in education as a bilingual (Spanish/English) elementary teacher, and later as a high school counselor, in El Paso, Texas. López is an AERA and APA Division 15 Fellow. Her research is focused on educator knowledge and behaviors that promote achievement and identity outcomes for marginalized youth in various educational settings. 

Email Francesca López at: flopez5@wisc.edu

Ruth M. López, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Practice at The University of Arizona College of Education. She earned B.A.s in Mexican American Studies and Spanish at The University of Texas at Austin, and PhD in Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice at the University of Colorado Boulder. She was previously a Senior Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. Prior to earning her PhD, she was a college outreach counselor in Houston through the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at UT-Austin, and a program coordinator of the Colorado Diversity Initiative at CU-Boulder. Dr. López’s research addresses the social and political contexts that students of color navigate across K-12 schools. Her work examines 1) the intersections of education and immigration policies, 2) college access for Latinx and undocumented students, 3) the experiences of Latinas at Hispanic Serving Institutions. Dr. López’s commitment to educational equity and college access is informed by her multiple identities as the daughter of immigrants from El Salvador and Mexico, first-generation college student/graduate, and mother scholar.

Email Ruth López at: ruthlopez@arizona.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

Catherine A. Lugg is Professor Emerita of education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. Professor Lugg’s research interests include educational history and policy, the influences of media on policymaking, and social history.

Email Catherine A. Lugg at: catherinealugg@gmail.com

Jeff MacSwan is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Maryland. He is also Professor of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and affiliate Professor in the Department of Linguistics. His research program focuses on the linguistic study of codeswitching, translanguaging theory, on the role of language in the education of multilingual students, and education policy. His work has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Lingua, the Bilingual Research Journal, World Englishes, and Language Teaching Research, among others. He served on the Committee on Fostering the Development and Educational Success of Dual Language Learners of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. MacSwan is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the 2021 recipient of the AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG Lifetime Achievement Award and the Second Language Research SIG Leadership through Research Award. MacSwan previously taught linguistically diverse middle and high school students in Los Angeles public schools.

Email Jeff MacSwan at: macswan@umd.edu

Bryan Mann is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas, and Director of the Center for Geography of Education Policy. He holds a PhD in Educational Theory and Policy from the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on geography and educational policy, exploring key questions about school enrollment trends and policy mechanisms that enhance educational and social equity. Dr. Mann's work spans areas such as segregation and diversity, school choice, and alternative education models. Notably, his studies have shed light on trends related to rural segregation in Alabama, the impact of gentrification on education in Washington DC, and the geospatial patterns of cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania. Prior to his role at the University of Kansas, Dr. Mann was an assistant professor at the University of Alabama and a high school English teacher in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

Email Bryan Mann at: bryanmann@ku.edu

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

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

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

Susan Ohanian, a long-time public school teacher, is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in Atlantic, Parents, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week, Language Arts, and American School Board Journal. In 2003, Ohanian received The National Council of Teachers of English's "NCTE Orwell Award" for her outstanding contribution, via her now-defunct website, to the critical analysis of public discourse.

Email Susan Ohanian at: susano@gmavt.net

Gary Orfield is Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. His interests include the study of civil rights, urban policy, and minority opportunity. His research methods range from original survey research to analysis of national data sets to political analysis of urban decision-making.

Email Gary Orfield at: orfield@gmail.com

Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

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

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