NEPC Topic Experts on School Choice

Samuel E. Abrams is the director of NEPC’s International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization (IPSEP), launched in 2024, and the author of Education and the Commercial Mindset (Harvard University Press, 2016). In addition, he has written on education policy for The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, and Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications. From 2015 to 2024, he served as the director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. In 2022-23, he served as a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Turku in Finland, where he remains a visiting scholar. For his advancement of the understanding of Finnish education in the United States, he was knighted by the Finnish government in 2012. Abrams was previously a high school history teacher for 18 years. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Columbia.

Email Sam Abrams at: samuel.abrams@utu.fi

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

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

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

Effective July 1, 2024, Katrina Bulkley will be Dean of Teachers College at Ball State University. She was previously at Montclair State University, serving as a university innovation fellow working within the president’s office, interim dean of the College of Education and Human Services, chair of the Department of Educational Leadership, and Professor of Educational Leadership. 

Bulkley's research examines the intersection of policy and leadership in efforts to increase market-linked practices in education and enhance accountability and data-driven change. She studies issues around the increasing use of new governance structures and non-public actors to improve public education (with a particular focus on urban education). She is the lead author of Challenging the One Best System: The Portfolio Management Model and Urban School Governance (Harvard Education Press, November, 2020). This project, funded through a Lyle Spencer Research Award by the Spencer Foundation, examined the connections between system-level governance change and educational practice in Denver, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. 

As a Research Partner with the IES-funded National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice, she has studied state policy and choice, including the role of charter school authorizers in addressing the needs of historically marginalized populations and the impact of COVID-19 on school choice.

Email Katrina Bulkley at: katrina.bulkley@bsu.edu

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

Casey Cobb is Professor and Department Head of Educational Leadership and Director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the University of Connecticut. His current research interests include policies on accountability, school choice, and desegregation, where he examines the implications for equity among historically marginalized populations. He teaches courses in policy studies, research methods, and program evaluation.

Email Casey Cobb at casey.cobb@uconn.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 

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

Elizabeth DeBray (Ed.D., Harvard University) is a Professor of Educational Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia.  Dr. DeBray’s major interests are the implementation and effects of federal and state elementary and secondary school policies, and the politics of education at the federal level. She is author of Politics, Ideology, and Education: Federal Policy during the Clinton and Bush Administrations (Teachers College Press, 2006) and co-editor (with E. Frankenberg) of Integrating Schools in a Changing Society (UNC Press, 2011). She was a 2005 recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.  Since 2011, she has served as the co-P.I. (with Christopher Lubienski and Janelle Scott) of two W.T. Grant Foundation-funded project on how intermediary organizations promote research on incentivist education policies in urban settings.

Email Elizabeth DeBray at: edebray@uga.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

Erica Frankenberg is an associate professor of education and demography at the Pennsylvania State University, and co-director of the Center for Education and Civil Rights. Her research interests focus on racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools, including how school choice policies affect students’ stratification and equal opportunity.

Email Erica Frankenberg at: euf10@psu.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

David R. Garcia is an Associate Professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. His academic publications focus on school choice, policy development/implementation in public education and research use in policymaking. In 2018, he published Essential Knowledge: School Choice (the MIT Press). In 2021, he published Teach Truth to Power: How to Engage in Education Policy (the MIT Press). David’s professional experience includes extensive work in education policy development and implementation, including as the former Associate Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of Arizona and Democratic candidate for Arizona Governor in 2018. David holds a BA from Arizona State University and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Email David R. Garcia at: david.garcia@asu.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, his interests broadened to include psychotherapy research, evaluation methodology, and policy analysis. He was twice (1968, 1970) honored with the Palmer O. Johnson award of the American Educational Research Association; and in 1984, he received the Paul Lazarsfeld Award of the American Evaluation Association. He is a recipient of the Cattell Award of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology. His work on meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcomes with Mary Lee Smith was named as one of the Forty Studies that Changed Psychology in the book of the same name by Roger R. Hock (1999). His Ph.D. was awarded in 1965 by the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in educational psychology with a minor in mathematical statistics. His more recent contributions to the analysis of education policy include Fertilizers, Pills and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America (2008), and 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education (2014) with D.C. Berliner & Associates.

Email Gene V Glass at: glass@asu.edu or gvglass@gmail.com

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

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

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

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

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

Francesca López, PhD is the Waterbury Chair in Equity Pedagogy at Penn State University, College of Education, Curriculum and Instruction Department. Her research focuses on the ways educational settings promote achievement for marginalized youth.  It has been funded by the American Educational Research Association Grants Program, the Division 15 American Psychological Association Early Career Award, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Email Francesca López at: falopez@psu.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

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

Julie Fisher Mead is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Dr. Mead researches and writes about topics related to the legal aspects of education. Her research centers on legal issues related to special education and legal issues raised by various forms of school choice, including charter schools and vouchers.

Email Julie Fisher Mead at: jmead@education.wisc.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

NEPC Director Alex Molnar founded NEPC with Kevin Welner in 2010. He is a Research Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and also co-directs the Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU). He has published numerous articles on social and educational policy and practice. For the past three decades, he has studied and written about commercial activities in schools. Molnar has also researched the impact of reduced class size on student achievement and market-based school reforms such as private school vouchers, charter schools, virtual schools, and for-profit schools. Molnar has a B.A. in history, political science, and education; two masters degrees, one in history and one in social welfare; a Specialist's Certificate in educational administration; and a Ph.D. in urban education. His most recent book, Sold Out: How Marketing in School Threatens Children's Well-Being and Undermines their Education, with Faith Boninger, was released in 2015. 

Email Alex Molnar at: nepc.molnar@gmail.com 

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

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

Carrie Sampson, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University. Her scholarship focuses on how educational leadership and policymaking at the K-12 level influences equity and social justice for minoritized youth and their families. Dr. Sampson has conducted research on school desegregation policies. Her most recent line of research is centered at the school district level with an emphasis on governance, particularly the role of school boards, community advocacy, decentralization, and school choice policies. Her methodological expertise is in case study and qualitative methods. Dr. Sampson’s research on school boards was recently funded by the National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Email Carrie Sampson at: csampso4@asu.edu

Janelle Scott is a Professor and the Robert C. and Mary Catherine Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities at the University of California at Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education, African American Studies Department, and Goldman School of Public Policy. She earned a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of California at Los Angeles’ Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Before earning her doctorate, she was a teacher in Oakland, California. 

Professor Scott’s research investigates how market-based educational reforms affect democratic accountability and equity in public education. She has explored this research program across several policy strands: 1) the racial politics of public education, 2) the politics of school choice, marketization, and privatization, 3) the politics of research evidence on market-oriented reforms, and, 4) the role of elite and community-based advocacy in shaping public education and research evidence utilization. Her work has appeared in several edited books and journals, including the Peabody Journal of Education, Educational Policy, Qualitative Inquiry, the American Educational Research Journal, and the Harvard Educational Review.

She was awarded a Spencer Dissertation Year Fellowship, and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2014, she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Committee on Scholars of Color.  In 2020, she was elected as an AERA Fellow. She is Vice President for Division L (Policy and Politics) of AERA (2019-2022). She is the editor of School choice and diversity: What the evidence says (2005 Teachers College Press), and, with Sonya Horsford and Gary Anderson, author of The Politics of Education in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for democratic schooling (2018 Routledge). 

Email Janelle T. Scott at: jtscott@berkeley.edu

Robert Shand is 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: Shand@exchange.tc.columbia.edu

Genevieve Siegel-Hawley is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research examines the scope and dynamics of school segregation and resegregation in U.S. metropolitan areas, along with policies for promoting intentionally integrated schools and communities. Siegel-Hawley has published numerous articles dealing with these topics in journals like Teachers College Record, the Harvard Educational Review, Educational Researcher and the Urban Review. She is also the author of two books, When the Fences Come Down: 21st Century Lessons from Metropolitan School Desegregation (UNC Press, 2016) and A Single Garment: Creating Intentionally Diverse Schools that Benefit All Children (Harvard Education Press, 2020). Siegel-Hawley teaches courses examining how and why equal educational opportunity is distributed so unequally across urban, suburban and exurban districts. She is a native of Richmond and a proud graduate of and former teacher in Richmond Public Schools.

Email Genevieve Siegel-Hawley at: gsiegelhawle@vcu.edu

P. L. Thomas, Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is a former column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English), current series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Brill), and author of Teaching Writing as Journey, Not Destination: Essays Exploring What ‘Teaching Writing’ Means (IAP, 2019) and How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (IAP, in press). NCTE named Thomas the 2013 George Orwell Award winner. He co-edited the award-winning (Divergent Book Award for Excellence in 21^st Century Literacies Research) volume Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America (Brill, 2018). Follow his work @plthomasEdD and the becoming radical (http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/).

Email P.L. Thomas at: paul.thomas@furman.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

Amy Stuart Wells is the Dean of the Bank Street School of Education. A leader and established scholar in the field of education, Wells has worked as a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College (TC), Columbia University since 2001. She is also the founder and executive director of TC’s nationally recognized professional development program Reimagining Education: Teaching, Learning, and Leading for a Racially Just Society and leads several research projects, including The Public Good: A Public School Support Organization, which is dedicated to supporting and sustaining racially diverse public schools. Throughout her career, Wells has made extensive scholarly contributions, not only through the publication of her own books and articles but also by serving as the president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) from 2018-19, among other endeavors. She has worked on issues related to school reform policies and the ways that diversity and segregation impact the health of a school. Her current work is focused on supporting teachers, schools, and school systems in integrating anti-racist policies and practices into their approach to education. 

Email Amy Stuart Wells at: awells@bankstreet.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