NEPC Experts in Texas

David E. DeMatthews is the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Special Education. His research primarily focuses on district and school leadership. More specifically, he aims to understand how educational leaders create and sustain schools where all students are present, meaningfully engaged, and achieving at high levels, with a specific focus on students with disabilities. Given the importance of stable district and school leadership to school improvement processes, he has also cultivated a stream of research focused on superintendent and principal career pathways, job-related stress and burnout, and turnover. DeMatthews has also examined the impact of school choice policies on public schools and historically marginalized students. Prior to arriving at UT-Austin, DeMatthews was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. He began his career in education working as a teacher, campus leader, and district administrator in Baltimore City Public Schools and the District of Columbia Public Schools. 

Email David E. DeMatthews at: ddematthews@austin.utexas.edu

T. Philip Nichols is an associate professor of literacy education at Baylor University. His research examines how digital technologies remake the conditions of learning, instruction, and leadership in K-12 schools and the implications for educational equity. He is the author of Building the Innovation School: Infrastructures for Equity in Today’s Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2022) and co-editor of Literacies in the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, Possibilities (Routledge, 2025).

Email Phil Nichols at: Phil_Nichols@baylor.edu

Richard R. Valencia is Professor of Educational Psychology and Faculty Associate of the Center for Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.  He is also Fellow in the Lee Hage Jamail Regents Chair in Education.  Dr. Valencia’s area of scholarly specialization is racial/ethnic minority education, with a particular focus on Mexican Americans (educational history; testing/assessment issues; social thought; demographic trends; educational litigation; intellectual/academic test performance; educational policy).  Dr. Valencia’s honors include the 2001 Distinguished Career Contribution Award, awarded by the American Educational Research Association, and the 2001 Distinguished Faculty Award from the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education.  During his career, Dr. Valencia has served as an expert witness for plaintiffs of color in a number of education lawsuits, most recently in the 2006 federal-level Santamaria v. Dallas Independent School District segregation case in which the plaintiffs prevailed.

Email Richard R. Valencia at: richard.valencia@mail.utexas.edu

Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Educational Policy and Planning Program Area within the Department of Educational Administration and the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin where she also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.

A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99).  In 2007 as a Fulbright Scholar, she also taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.

Valenzuela is also the author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring and Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth.

She also has a volume that is in press based on her national-level work as director of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) titled, Growing Critically Conscious Teachers for Latino/a Youth: A Grounded Social Justice Approach (NY: Teachers College Press).

Valenzuela's research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, race and ethnic relations, education policy, school partnerships, urban education reform, and indigenous education.

Email Angela Valenzuela at: valenz@austin.utexas.edu