Affiliates
UEL Affiliates
DANIEL AARONSON is a vice president and director of microeconomic research in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Aaronson conducts research on topics related to labor markets and education. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Urban Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics and has also been featured in Chicago Fed research publications, including Economic Perspectives and Chicago Fed Letter. Prior to his current position, Aaronson served as a senior economist and economic advisor in the economic research area. He began his career at the Chicago Fed as a staff economist in 1996. He has also taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Aaronson received a B.A. in Economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in Economics from Northwestern University.
ELAINE ALLENSWORTH is Interim Executive Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research. She conducts research on factors affecting school improvement and students' educational attainment, including research on high school graduation, college readiness, curriculum and instruction, and school organization and leadership. She is best known for her work on early indicators of high school graduation, which has been used as the research base for high school tracking systems in Chicago and in districts across the country. One of her current projects extends the study college readiness to the middle grade level, to understand how students' eventual success is shaped by their experiences before and during high school. Her work is frequently covered in the local and national media, including the New York Times and Ed Week, and she has received a number of outstanding publications awards from the American Educational Research Association. Allensworth received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Michigan State University.
LISA BARROW is a Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and an Affiliated Scholar at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on issues in education, public finance, and labor economics. She has worked on a variety of issues in education, including a randomized evaluation of computer-aided algebra instruction in large urban school districts, evaluation of performance-based scholarships at the community college level (with MDRC), and follow-up and time use survey development for the MDRC PBS demonstration. Barrow also has on-going studies using Chicago Public Schools data to look at the effect of closing persistently failing schools on elementary school students and evaluating student outcomes in small high schools. Her prior research on school choice, education production, and the earned income tax credit has appeared in numerous economic and policy journals. Barrow has also been a visiting assistant professor at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and a visiting lecturer at the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Barrow received a B.A. in Economics from Carleton College and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Princeton University.
CLIVE BELFIELD is Associate Professor of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York and Co-Director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. His research and publications have focused on the Economics of Education in areas including: privatization and vouchers; over-education; cost-effectiveness analysis; cost-benefit analysis; early education; and the returns to community college. He is also an Associate Editor of The Economics of Education Review. Belfield received a M.A. in Economics from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Exeter, England.
ERIC BETTINGER is an Associate Professor at Stanford University's School of Education. His current research focuses on factors that improve students' access to and success in college, including: the role of teacher charactistics and class sizes in college, the role of need-based financial aid, and the complexity of the college application process. Bettinger has also conducted significant research on the effects of financial incentives for students and on the effects of voucher programs on both academic and non-academic outcomes of participating students. He received a B.A. in Economics from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.
AMY CLAESSENS is an Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy where she studies education, child development, and public policy. Her work investigates how policies and programs influence child development and how early achievement and socioemotional skills relate to subsequent life outcomes. Claessens's work uses administrative or large-scale longitudinal data and utilizes both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Claessens has investigated a wide-range of issues surrounding child development and public policy including an experimental work support program and how achievement and socioemotional skills at school entry relate to later school achievement. Claessens received a B.S. in Social Policy and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy.
PHILIP J. COOK is the ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics and Sociology, at Duke University. He served as director and chair of Duke's Sanford Institute of Public Policy from 1985-89, and again from 1997-99, and is currently Senior Associate Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy. He is currently vice chair of the National Research Council's Committee on Law and Justice, and previously served as a member of the Division Committee for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Cook has active research programs on a number of topics, including: truancy prevention; crime prevention through private action; and alcohol control policy. Cook is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, an honorary Fellow in the American Society of Criminology, and a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Cook received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
JULIE CULLEN is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California, San Diego. She was a member of the faculty at the University of Michigan until 2004. As a public finance economist who specializes in the economics of education, her research has investigated the intended and unintended impacts of school finance, choice and accountability policies. She is currently a coeditor at the Journal of Human Resources and serves on several other editorial boards. Cullen received a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Masschusetts Institute of Technology.
DAVID DEMING is Assistant Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research focuses on the economics of education, particularly early childhood and K-12 education, and the effect of education policies on long-term outcomes other than test scores. Deming received a B.S. in Economics and a B.A. in Political Science from Ohio State University, a M.P.P. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.
KENNETH A. DODGE is the William McDougall Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. He directs the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy, which is devoted to finding solutions to problems facing youth in contemporary society. He conducts research on the development and prevention of antisocial behavior in children and families and public policy to enhance children’s social development. He has been honored with the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the Boyd McCandless Award, the Science to Practice Award from the Society for Prevention Research, and the Senior Scientist Award from the National Institutes of Health. Dodge received a Ph.D. from Duke University.
GREG J. DUNCAN is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Beginning in the late 1980s, Duncan engaged in a number of interdisciplinary research networks to focus on the impacts of family and neighborhood conditions on children's cognitive and behavioral development. Duncan was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2010. He was President of the Midwest Economics Association in 2004, the Population Association of America in 2008, and the Society for Research in Child Development in 2009-2011. Duncan received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.
SUSAN DYNARSKI is Associate Professor of Economics, Education and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an editor of The Journal of Labor Economics and Education Finance and Policy. Her research focuses on the effectiveness of charter schools, the optimal design of financial aid, the price elasticity of private school attendance, the relationship between postsecondary schooling and labor market outcomes, and the effect of high school reforms on academic achievement and educational attainment. Dynarski has testified to the US Senate Finance Committee, the US House Ways and Means Committee and the President's Commission on Tax Reform. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Princeton University. Dynarski holds a M.S. in Public Policy from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
INGRID GOULD ELLEN is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Co-Director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Her research interests center on urban social and economic policy. She is author of Sharing America's Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration (Harvard University Press, 2000) and has written numerous journal articles and book chapters related to housing policy, neighborhood change, urban growth, and school and neighborhood segregation. She has held visiting positions at the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. Ellen received a M.P.P. and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University.
MIMI ENGEL is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of Education and Human Development. Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt, she was an Institute of Education Sciences Post-Doctoral Fellow with Professor Larry Hedges at Northwestern University. She also previously worked as a research associate at the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research. Engel's work employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate issues in education policy. She focuses on reform efforts and policies that affect disadvantaged populations. She has done extensive research in the Chicago Public Schools and utilizes large-scale national databases. Her publications include peer-reviewed articles in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Journal of Education, and Teachers College Record, among others. Engel received a B.A. in History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, an A.M. in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy.
DAVID FIGLIO is the Orrington Lunt Professor of Education and Social Policy and Economics; Fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University; Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and founding member of the CESifo Research Program on the Economics of Education. He was the inaugural co-editor of Education Finance and Policy and serves as an associate editor of seven other scholarly journals in economics and education. Figlio received a B.S. in Business Economics and Public Policy from George Washington University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
LARRY V. HEDGES is the Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics and Professor of Educational and Social Policy at Northwestern University, formerly the Stella M. Rowley Distinguished Service Professor of Education, Psychology, and Sociology at the University of Chicago. Hedges research interests include the development of statistical methods for social research, the use of statistical concepts in social and cognitive theory, the demography of talent and academic achievement, and educational policy analysis. His work on educational policy concerns the relation of school resources to educational outcomes such as academic achievement and the development of evidence-based social policy. He is a member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Educational Research Association, the American Statistical Association, and the American Psychological Association. He is currently co-editor of the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness and, for the last five years, has served as co-director of the IES summer institute on randomized trials for established researchers. Hedges received a M.A. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Methods in Educational Research from Stanford.
HEATHER HILL is an Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. Her fields of interest include poverty and inequality, program evaluation, maternal employment, unmarried parents, and the health and development of young children. Her research examines the effects of social policy on family economic circumstances and on child health and development. At the University of Chicago, Hill is an affiliate of the Population Research Center and the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. Hill is also a co-Principal Investigator of EINet: The Employment Instability, Family Well-being, and Social Policy Network, based at SSA. EINet is an interdisciplinary network of researchers interested in the causes and consequences of employment instability, and in exploring opportunities to promote stability through workplace and policy interventions. Hill received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington, a Master of Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University.
C. KIRABO JACKSON is Assistant Professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests span the fields of labor economics, public finance, and applied econometrics, with a focus on the economics of education. Much of his research has focused on the role of teachers in the K-12 system. Specifically, his recent work analyzes the role of peer learning among teachers in determining teacher effectiveness, how student demographics directly affect the distribution of teacher quality across schools, and how policies that reward teachers(and students) for student achievement improve student outcomes. Jackson is also involved in ongoing projects studying the effects of attending single-sex schools on student outcomes. His work has appeared in economics journals such as the American Economic Journal, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Human Resources, and his research has been featured in news outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and USA Today. Kirabo received a B.A. in Ethics, Politics and Economics from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
BRIAN JACOB is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy, Professor of Economics, and Director of the Center on Local, State and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an Executive Committee Member of the National Poverty Center. He has previously served as a policy analyst in the NYC Mayor's Office and taught middle school in East Harlem. His primary fields of interest are labor economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education. His current research focuses on urban school reform and teacher labor markets. In recent work, he has examined school choice, education accountability programs, housing vouchers, and teacher promotion policies. Jacob received a B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
ROBIN TEPPER JACOB is a member of the faculty of the School of Education and the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan. She is co-founder of the Education and Well-Being Program at ISR and a co-director of the School Reform and Beyond (SRB) initiative. She currently serves as co-principal investigator for several research endeavors centered on teaching and learning. Before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan, Jacob worked for Abt Associate Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she served as the deputy project director for the $25 million Reading First Impact Study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education. While at Abt, Jacob also served as task leader and director on numerous other education evaluations. Jacob is a skillful evaluator of educational interventions with a special interest in how policies and programs can affect instructional quality and outcomes in elementary schools. She has extensive experience conducting evaluations of education reform initiatives, measuring educational outcomes, and analyzing student achievement and other outcome data. In addition to her substantive evaluation work, she is an expert in and publishes articles on evaluation methods. Much of her work focuses on strategically leveraging school reforms designed to maximize academic outcomes for children across all ethnic groups and income levels. Jacob received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
ARIEL KALIL is a Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, where she also directs the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. She studies how family contexts, including families' economic characteristics as well as parental behavior, affect the development of children in economically-disadvantaged families. Her recent projects have examined how parental education shapes parental time use in ways that promote children's development, and also how early childhood poverty affects health, achievement, and well-being in later life. She has served as an associate editor for the journal Developmental Psychology and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Marriage and Family. Kalil has received early-career awards from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Foundation for Child Development, and she was the first-ever recipient of the Award for Early Research Contributions from the Society for Research in Child Development. She received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan.
LAWRENCE F. KATZ is the Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on issues in labor economics and the economics of social problems. He is the author (with Claudia Goldin) of The Race between Education and Technology (Harvard University Press, 2008), a history of U.S. economic inequality and the roles of technological change and the pace of educational advance in affecting the wage structure. He also has been studying the impacts of neighborhood poverty on low-income families as the principal investigator of the long-term evaluation of the Moving to Opportunity program, a randomized housing mobility experiment, and is also working with Claudia Goldin on a long-term project studying the historical evolution of career and family choices and outcomes for U.S. college men and women. Katz has been editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics since 1991 and served as the Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor for 1993 and 1994. He has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Society of Labor Economists. Katz received an A.B. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
JAMES S. KIM is Assistant Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a former American history teacher and chair of the history and civics department in an ethnically diverse middle school. His most recent work focuses on the use of experimental designs to evaluate literacy interventions involving upper elementary, middle, and high school students in high-poverty schools. In his experimental research, he studies the impact of literacy interventions on the development of children’s literacy skills during the school year and summer months. His recent work has included evaluations of a voluntary summer reading intervention with teacher and parent scaffolding called Project READS (Reading Enhances Achievement During Summer). He is also working with a team of scholars at the University of California, Irvine on an efficacy study of a cognitive strategies approach to teaching text-based analytical writing called the Pathway Project designed by Dr. Carol Booth Olson. In both projects, he collaborates with interdisciplinary research teams including statisticians, economists, linguists, and psychologists. He has also served as a methodological consultant on an evaluation of Teacher Study Groups in first grade reading classrooms, a mixed-method literacy intervention in after-school programs, and an adolescent reading course for struggling readers. He is a 2008 National Academy of Education, Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. Kim received a B.A. in History and a M.T. in Elementary and Secondary Education from the University of Virginia, and a Ed.D. in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
HELEN F. LADD is the Edgar Thompson Professor of Public Policy Studies and Professor of Economics at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Prior to 1986, she taught at Dartmouth College, Wellesley College, and at Harvard University, first in the City and Regional Planning Program and then in the Kennedy School of Government. She has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a senior research fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 1996-99 she co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences Committee on Education Finance. Most of her current research focuses on education policy. She is particularly interested in various aspects of school accountability, education finance, teacher labor markets, and school choice. She has written numerous articles and books on charter schools and other forms of choice in North Carolina, self-governing schools and parental choice in both New Zealand and the Netherlands, market based reforms in urban school districts, voucher programs, and school reform in post-Apartheid South Africa. She is also the editor of Holding Schools Accountable: Performance-Based Reform in Education (Brookings Institution, 1996) and co-editor (with Edward Fiske) of The Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy (2008), the official handbook of the American Education Finance Association. Ladd received a B.A. from Wellesley College, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
HENRY M. LEVIN is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education, Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education (NCSPE), and Co-Director of the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education at Teacher's College Columbia University. 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's areas of specialization include the economics of education, economics of human resources, urban economics, public finance, and education policy. His primary research interests are accelerated schools for at-risk students, financing education and economic analysis of education and inequality, cost-effectiveness approaches to evaluation, and market approaches to education. He has been President of the Palo Alto, California School Board, the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and the American Evaluation Association. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and the author of about 300 articles, and author or editor of 20 books. Levin received a B.S. in Marketing and Economics from New York University and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University.
SUSANNA LOEB is a professor of education at Stanford University, Director of the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice (IREPP) and a co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). Loeb specializes in the economics of education and the relationship between schools and federal, state and local policies. Much of her research addresses teacher policy, looking specifically at how teachers' preferences affect the distribution of teaching quality across schools, how pre-service coursework requirements affect the quality of teacher candidates, and how reforms affect teachers' career decisions. Her related work on school leadership examines the career histories of principals as well as their day-to-day behaviors and skills associated with student learning. She also studies school leadership and school finance, for example looking at how the structure of state finance systems affects the level and distribution of resources across schools. Loeb is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Econmic Research, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the policy council of the Assocation for Policy Analysis and Management, and Co-Editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Loeb received a B.A. in Political Science and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, a M.P.P. from the University of Michigan Institute of Public Policy Studies and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.
KATHERINE MAGNUSON is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work and the Associate Director for Research and Training for the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on the well-being and development of economically disadvantaged children and their families, examining how disparities in socioeconomic status affect children's development, and how these effects may be altered by policies and programs, especially early childhood education programs. Specifically, her research blends two streams of research that are often considered separately: (1) research on the influence of parents' employment, income, and education, as well as welfare policies, on children's well-being, with a special emphasis on the extent to which differences in SES across racial and ethnic groups explain disparities in children's school performance; and (2) research on direct child interventions, particularly early education, that may serve a compensatory role for disadvantaged children. The first body of literature illuminates the scope of possible benefits that may accrue to children from interventions that directly improve the well-being of their parents, while the second line of research provides insights regarding how directing services and resources to children, rather than to their parents, may buffer the harmful effects of being raised in a disadvantaged family. Her current work focuses on understanding the intergenerational transmission of human capital, particularly the effects of maternal education on children, and the role of early education interventions in improving children's school readiness. Magnuson received a B.A. in History and Political Science from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University.
OFER MALAMUD is Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy; faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research; and faculty affiliate at the University of Chicago's Population Research Center and the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. He primarily conducts research in the fields of labor economics and the economics of education. His work focuses on the labor market outcomes associated with general and specific education. In particular, he has examined the relative returns to academic and vocational education in Romania and the trade-off between early specialization and the gains from delaying the choice of a major field of study in Britain. He has also studied the effect of education on regional mobility using the unintended effect of attending college to avoid the Vietnam draft, and most recently, the effect of home computer use on child and adolescent outcomes. He was a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow during 2003-2004. Malamud received a B.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
SUSAN MAYER is a Professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and the College. Mayer is a member of the Board of Directors of Chapin Hall Center for Children and the General Accounting Office Educators' Advisory Panel. She served as dean of the Harris School of Public Policy from 2002 to 2009. She has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on National Statistics Panel to Review U.S. Department of Agriculture's Measurement of Food Insecurity and Hunger, and the Committee on Standards of Evidence and the Quality of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. Mayer is the past director and deputy director of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. She has served as an associate editor for the American Journal of Sociology. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on the measurement of poverty, the effect of growing up in poor neighborhoods, and the effect of parental income on children's well-being. She is currently doing research on intergenerational economic mobility, having recently published, "Has the Intergenerational Transmission of Economic Status Changed?" (Journal of Human Resources) and "Government Spending and Intergenerational Mobility" (Journal of Public Economics), among other papers on this topic, and on improving educational outcomes in developing countries. Mayer received a B.A. and a M.A. in Sociology from Indiana University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University.
BHASH MAZUMDER is a senior economist in the economic research department and executive director of the Chicago Census Research Data Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Mazumder previously worked at the Conference Board in New York and oversaw the transfer of the leading economic indicators from the Commerce Department to the Conference Board. As a member of the microeconomic team, Mazumder conducts research in labor economics, education and health. His recent research has focused on the long-term effects of poor health early in life. He has also written several papers on intergenerational economic mobility. Mazumder’s research has been published in the American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Journal of Human Resources and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His research has also been featured in the Chicago Fed Letter and Economic Perspectives. Mazumder has also served as a co-editor for a symposium on intergenerational mobility at the journal, Industrial Relations. Mazumder received a B.A. in Political Science from New York University, a M.A. in Economics from New York University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
RICHARD MURNANE is Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In recent years, his research has examined: how computer-based technological change has affected skill demands in the U.S. economy; how increases in family income inequality in the U.S. have influenced educational opportunities for children from low-income families; and the consequences of particular initiatives designed to improve the performance of the education sector such as salary bonuses to skilled teachers in high need schools and exit examination requirements. Murnane received a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
PHILIP OREOPOULOS is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Research Fellow at Statistics Canada. He is also an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics. Oreopoulos has held previous visiting appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of British Columbia, and Harvard University. His research uses quasi-experimental methods and large-scale field experiments related to education and child development to explore the cost-effectiveness of particular programs and policies. His current projects include evaluations of the effects of incorporating college applications as part of high school curricula, providing personal assistance with applications, and crafting a better understanding of what schooling does across different levels. Oreopoulos received a M.A. from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
CHARLES M. PAYNE is the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, where he is also an affiliate of the Urban Education Institute. His interests include urban education and school reform, social inequality, social change and modern African American history. Payne has been a member of the Board of the Chicago Algebra Project, of the Steering Committee for the Consortium on Chicago School Research, the Research Advisory Committee for the Chicago Annenberg Project, the editorial boards of Catalyst, the Sociology of Education, and Educational Researcher. He currently serves on the Board of MDRC, the editorial board of High School Journal, and the advisory board for Teacher College Press' series on social justice. He is the co-founder of the Duke Curriculum Project, which involves university faculty in the professional development of public school teachers and also co-founder of the John Hope Franklin Scholars, which tries to better prepare high school youngsters for college. He is among the founders of the Education for Liberation Network, and was founding director of the Urban Education Project in Orange, New Jersey. Payne has taught at Southern University, Williams College, Northwestern University and Duke University. He has won several teaching awards and at Northwestern, he held the Charles Deering McCormick Chair for Teaching Excellence and at Duke, the Sally Dalton Robinson Chair for excellence in teaching and research. He is the author of numerous works, including Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure In Urban Education (1984). Payne recently published So Much Reform, So Little Change (Harvard Education Publishing Group) which is concerned with what we have learned about the persistence of failure in urban districts, and an anthology, Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of Education For Liberation (Teachers College Press), which is concerned with Freedom School-like education. He is the recipient of a Senior Scholar grant from the Spencer Foundation and was a Resident Fellow at the foundation for 2006-7. He was also the recipient of an Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for 2007-8. Payne received a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern.
JONAH ROCKOFF is Sidney Taurel Associate Professor of Business at the Columbia Graduate School of Business and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Rockoff's interests center on local public finance and the economics of education. He has done research on the determinants of property taxation and expenditure in local public school districts, the impact of crime risk on local property values, the importance of teachers and teacher certification in determining student achievement, subjective and objective evaluation of teacher performance, and other educational policies such as charter schools, school accountability systems, class size reductions, and grade configuration. Rockoff received a B.A. in Economics from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
JESSE ROTHSTEIN is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley; a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a member of the Board of Editors of the American Economic Review. 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 current studies include: an examination of the role of affirmative action in legal education; an assessment of Justice O’Connor’s prediction in Grutter v. Bollinger that affirmative action will be unnecessary within a quarter century; and a study of the extent to which the black-white test score gap is attributable to family income differences. Rothstein received a M.P.P. from the University of California, Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
DIANE WHITMORE SCHANZENBACH is an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She studies education policy, child health, and food consumption. Her most recent work investigates the impact of school accountability policies (like the Federal No Child Left Behind Act) and school reform policies (such as small schools and charter schools) on student performance and other outcomes. In addition, she has used the Project STAR experiment to study the impact of classroom composition and class size on student outcomes. In current projects, she is studying the impact of school policies such as school lunches and availability of recess and gym class on child obesity. Schanzenbach received a B.A. in Economics and Religion from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University.
AMY ELLEN SCHWARTZ is Director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy and Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. An applied economist, her research focuses on issues in urban policy, education policy, and housing. Her current projects focus on: issues of student mobility; immigration; and the relationship between the current housing crisis and student outcomes. She is past president of the American Education Finance Association, and is a member of the editorial board for Education Finance and Policy, and the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession of the American Economics Association. Schwartz received a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University.
JUDY SCOTT-CLAYTON is Assistant Professor in Economics and Education and Senior Research Associate at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University Teachers College. Her primary research fields are labor economics and higher education policy, with particular interest in: the role of financial aid policy in addressing inequalities in educational attainment, the consequences of rising term-time student employment, and the interactions between program/bureacratic complexity, family background, and college success. One of her ongoing projects evaluates the effects of a large-scale merit-based scholarship program in West Virginia and has been cited in the New York Times Magazine. Her previous research with Professor Susan Dynarski (University of Michigan) into the consequences of complexity in federal student aid has been published in the National Tax Journal and Tax Policy and the Economy, and has contributed to current policy debates about financial aid simplification. Scott-Clayton received a B.A. in Sociology from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.
MARIO LUIS SMALL is Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago. Small's research has focused on neighborhood poverty, social capital and networks, inequality and culture, and case study methods. His work has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, Theory and Society, and Social Science Quarterly. His book, Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio (2004, University of Chicago Press), a study of social capital in a Boston housing complex inhabited primarily by Puerto Rican immigrants, received numerous honors, including the C. Wright Mills Award for Best Book and the Robert E. Park Award for Best Book. His latest book, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life (2009, Oxford University Press), which examined how the social networks of New York City mothers were affected by their children's childcare centers, also received several honors, including the C. Wright Mills Award for Best Book. Small is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Sociology and Editorial Board member of City and Community, Sociological Forum, and Social Science Quarterly. Small received a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.
JAMES SPILLANE is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Chair in Learning and Organizational Change, Professor at the School of Education and Social Policy, Faculty Associate of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, and Director of the Multidisciplinary Doctoral Program in Education Science at Northwestern University. His work explores the policy implementation process at the state, school district, school and classroom levels. He has worked to develop a cognitive perspective on the implementation process, exploring how local policy-makers, both administrators and teachers, come to understand state and national reforms. Spillane is also interested in organizational leadership and change; his work conceptualizes organizational leadership as a distributed practice involving formal and informal leaders, followers and a variety of organizational tools and artifacts. His most recent projects include a social network analysis of mathematics advice structures in elementary schools, an evaluation of how kernel organizational routines can develop leadership practice and improve student achievement in schools, and an examination of the preparation, recruitment, and retention of school principals. Spillane received a B.A. in Education from St. Patrick's College of Education, Dublin, Ireland, a M.A. in Education from California State University, Chico, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy from Michigan State University.
LAURENCE STEINBERG is the Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology at Temple University. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science and has been the recipient of numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the Society for Research on Adolescence and the American Psychological Association and teaching awards from the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, and Temple University. In 2009, he was named the first recipient of the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize, one of the largest prizes ever awarded to a social scientist, for his contributions to improving the lives of young people and their families. Dr. Steinberg is Past-President of the Division of Developmental Psychology of the American Psychological Association, former President of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and former Director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. Steinberg received a Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University.
LEANNA STIEFEL is Professor of Economics at New York University Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where she teaches courses in multiple regression and economics of education. Her current research projects include: costs of small high schools in New York City; effects of school organization on student achievement; racial test score gaps; and segregation, resource use and achievement of immigrant school children. Stiefel received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds an Advanced Professional Certificate in Finance from New York University's Stern School of Business.
DANA SUSKIND, MD is Associate Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics in the Department of Surgery and Director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implantation Program at the University of Chicago School of Medicine. Her research interests include addressing health disparities among children from a lower socio-economic status and disparities in children's listening, speaking and understanding potential. Currently, her research efforts include a parent-directed, educational intervention called Project ASPIRE (Achieving Superior Parental Involvement for Rehabilitative Excellence). Suskind received a B.S. in Biology and a M.D. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
MIGUEL URQUIOLA is an Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the Department of Economics at Columbia University. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources. His work focuses on educational topics including the effects of school choice on stratification and school quality. It covers mainly Latin America and the U.S., but also includes general models of school markets. He held prior appointments at the Russell Sage Foundation, Cornell University’s Economics Department, the World Bank’s research department, the Bolivian government, and the Bolivian Catholic University. Urquiola received a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
JACOB VIGDOR is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research interests are in the broad areas of education policy, housing policy, and political economy. Within those areas, he has published numerous scholarly articles on the topics of residential segregation, immigration, housing affordability, the consequences of gentrification, the determinants of student achievement in elementary school, the causes and consequences of delinquent behavior among adolescents, teacher turnover, civic participation and voting patterns, and racial inequality in the labor market. These articles have been published in outlets such as The Journal of Political Economy, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The Journal of Public Economics, The Journal of Human Resources, and The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Vigdor received a B.S. in Policy Analysis from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.
