NEPC Experts in California

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

Alfredo J. Artiles is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education at Stanford University. His scholarship examines the dual nature of disability as an object of protection and a tool of stratification. He aims to understand how responses to disability intersections with race, social class, gender and language advance or hinder educational opportunities for disparate groups of students.

Dr. Artiles received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Göteborgs (Sweden) and is an Honorary Professor at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). He is the Director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) and Director of the Research Institute at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. Dr. Artiles is the editor of the book series Disability, Culture, & Equity published (Teachers College Press). He has served on three consensus panels of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and was a Commissioner on the Obama White House Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Artiles has received mentoring awards from The Spencer Foundation, AERA, and Arizona State University. Dr. Artiles is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and Fellow of AERA and the Learning Policy Institute.

Email Alfredo Artiles at: aartiles@stanford.edu

Mitchell J. Chang is Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at the University of California, Los Angeles and also holds a joint appointment in the Asian American Studies Department. Chang's research focuses on the educational efficacy of diversity-related initiatives on college campuses and how to apply those best practices toward advancing student learning and democratizing institutions.  In 2006, he was profiled as one of the nation's top ten emerging scholars by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education (formerly Black Issues in Higher Education).

Email Mitch J. Chang at: mjchang@gseis.ucla.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

Bruce Fuller is professor emeritus in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. His research examines how public policies influence schools and families, particularly in efforts to decentralize education reform. Fuller explores the institutional and political challenges of designing effective policies, with studies spanning Latino communities in East Boston to impoverished communities in South Africa. He formerly served as director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and was a researcher at the World Bank. Before joining UC Berkeley, he was an associate professor of education and public policy at Harvard University and a project manager with the U.S. Agency for International Development at the U.S. Department of State. Earlier in his career, he served as a research sociologist at the World Bank and as an education advisor to the California State Legislature. He is the author of Standardized Childhood and Organizing Locally and is working on a book on civic activism and school reform in Los Angeles. Fuller earned his PhD in the sociology of education from Stanford University.

Email Bruce Fuller at: b_fuller@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

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

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

Daniel J. Losen is the Senior Director of the Education team at the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL), where he leads efforts to advance educational equity for all students, particularly children of color and others who have faced historic discrimination. He oversees staffing for the Education Civil Rights Alliance, an NCYL initiative that conducts research on civil rights issues and advocates for systemic education reform at the national, state, and local levels. Before joining NCYL, Dan spent over two decades as a civil rights attorney and education researcher, serving as Director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. He is the author of several books and award-winning reports on racial disparities in education policy and is recognized nationally for his expertise. Dan has testified on education inequities before the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, the National Academies of Science, and the U.S. Commission on Civil and Human Rights. A former public school teacher for 10 years, Dan has also served as an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School.

Email Daniel J. Losen at: losendan@gmail.com                     

Emilie Mitescu Reagan is an associate professor of education in the Claremont Graduate University School of Educational Studies. Her research focuses on social-justice oriented teacher education policy and practice, using primarily quantitative and mixed methods research.

Email Emilie Reagan at: emilie.reagan@cgu.edu

John Rogers is a professor in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and the Director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA). He also serves as the faculty co-director of UCLA’s Principal Leadership Institute. Rogers studies public engagement and community organizing as strategies for equity-focused school reform and democratic renewal. He draws extensively on the work of John Dewey to explore the meaning of, and possibilities for, democratic education today. John Rogers is the co-author (with Jeannie Oakes) of Learning Power: Organizing for Education and Justice (2006) and co-editor (with Marion Orr) of Public Engagement for Public Education: Joining Forces to Revitalize Democracy and Equalize Schools (2010). Professor Rogers received his Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University and his B.A. in Public Policy and African American Studies from Princeton University.

Email John Rogers at: rogers@gseis.ucla.edu

Marisa Saunders is associate director for research at UCLA’s Center for Community Schooling. Her primary areas of research focus on K-12 transformation efforts aimed to address long-standing educational inequalities. She has conducted extensive research that explores the potential and challenges associated with college and career pathways. Marisa has authored a number of publications and books including Beyond Tracking: Multiple Pathways to College, Career, and Civic Participation and Learning Time: In Pursuit of Educational Equity.

Email Marisa Saunders at: m.saunders@ucla.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

Christine Sleeter is Professor Emerita in the College of Education at California State University Monterey Bay, where she was a founding faculty member. Her research focuses on anti-racist multicultural education, the impact of ethnic studies on students, and the preparation of teachers for racially and ethnically diverse schools.

Email Christine Sleeter at: csleeter@gmail.com

Dr. Guillermo Solano-Flores is Professor of Education at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He specializes in educational assessment and the linguistic and cultural issues that are relevant to both international test comparisons and the testing of cultural and linguistic minorities. His research is based on the use of multidisciplinary approaches that use psychometrics, sociolinguistics, semiotics, and cognitive science in combination. He has conducted research on the development, translation, localization, and review of science and mathematics tests. He has been principal investigator in several National Science Foundation-funded projects that have examined the intersection of psychometrics, semiotics, and linguistics in testing. He is the author of the theory of test translation error, which addresses testing across cultures and languages. Also, he has investigated the use of generalizability theory—a psychometric theory of measurement error—in the testing of English language learners and indigenous populations. He has advised Latin American countries on the development of national assessment systems. Also, he has been the advisor to countries in Latin America, Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Northern Africa on the adaptation and translation of performance tasks into multiple languages.

Email Guillermo Solano-Flores at: gsolanof@stanford.edu

Tina Trujillo is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. She earned her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA and her M.A. in Education from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a former urban public school teacher, school reform consultant, and educational evaluator. Dr. Trujillo uses tools from political science and critical policy studies to study the political dimensions of urban district reform, the instructional and democratic consequences of high-stakes testing and accountability policies for students of color and English Learners, and trends in urban educational leadership. Her work is published in a range of journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, Journal of Educational Administration, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She is the co-editor of Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) (2016, Information Age Publishing, with William Mathis).

Email Tina Trujillo at: trujillo@berkeley.edu

Jennie Whitcomb is the principal of Sacred Heart Preparatory, a Catholic, independent high school in Northern California. Prior to joining Sacred Heart in 2015, she was the Associate Dean of Teacher Education at CU Boulder (2002-2015) and Director of Teacher Education at the University of Denver (1997-2002). Committed to quality teaching and teacher education, her scholarship has focused on teacher learning and teacher education policy and program design. From 2005-2009 she co-edited the Journal of Teacher Education, and in 2014 she was elected to the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education’s Board. Her turn from university teacher preparation to the daily life of a high school affords her opportunities to live her commitments to quality teaching and to fostering a vibrant, affirming school community focused on delivering powerful learning experiences that guide students to find their purpose and to serve their community.

Email Jennie Whitcomb at: jennie.whitcomb@outlook.com