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Meet the EWA Research Roundtable EWA has formed a roundtable of 12 researchers to review briefs for journalists on what studies say on various education topics, and to provide reporters with guidance on covering research. The researchers hail from think tanks, regional laboratories, and top universities. Meet the roundtable: Please contact Lori Crouch with questions or for additional information. Roundtable Bios: Dominic Brewer, University of Southern California Dominic Brewer is a labor economist specializing in the economics of education and education policy at the University of Southern California. Before joining USC in 2005, he was a vice president at RAND Corp., directing RAND’s education policy research program for more than five years. He has overseen major projects focusing on educational productivity and teacher issues in both K-12 and higher education, and published more than 50 academic economics and education journal articles, book chapters and monographs. Brewer is currently a co-editor of the economics section of the International Encyclopedia of Education and was an associate editor of Economics of Education Review. He holds a B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford, a master’s in economics from Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in labor economics from Cornell. (Return to Top) Beth Graue, University of Wisconsin M. Elizabeth Graue is professor of curriculum and instruction and is assistant director of Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Her areas of interest include readiness, class size reduction, preparing teachers for inclusive home-school relations, and qualitative research methods. She is currently part of a team of WCER researchers conducting an evaluation of Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee for Education (SAGE). Graue is also a member of the Qualitative Research Committee in the School of Education, which has developed a resource guide for faculty and graduate students. A former kindergarten teacher, she received her Ph.D. in research and evaluation methodology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. (Return to Top) Bryan Hassel is co-director of Public Impact. He consults nationally with leading public agencies, nonprofit organizations and foundations working for dramatic improvements in K-12 education. He is a recognized expert on charter schools, school turnarounds, education entrepreneurship, and teacher and leader policy. Hassel has also served as a consultant to leading efforts to create high-quality charter school systems, including the charter school office of the mayor of Indianapolis, and, more recently, Rhode Island’s creation of a network of mayor-led charter schools. He also authored the Brookings Institution Press book “The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise” and co-edited the Brookings volume "Learning from School Choice.” Hassel received his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University and his master's degree in politics from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He earned his B.A. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which he attended as a Morehead Scholar. (Return to Top) Robert Hauser, National Research Council Robert Hauser is the executive director of the National Research Council’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE). Prior to his arrival at the NRC, Hauser spent forty-one years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was professor of sociology and founder of the Center for Demography of Health and Aging. He collaborated with David L. Featherman on the 1973 Occupational Changes in a Generation Survey. Beginning in 1969, he collaborated with William H. Sewell on the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which began as a study of the transition from high school to college or the work force and has become a multi-disciplinary study of the life course and aging. In recent years, Hauser combined work on the WLS with studies of trends and differentials in educational attainment, the role of achievement testing in American society, and the measurement of adult literacy. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1983. Among his many awards is the 2003 Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Teaching of Sociology, American Sociological Association. He holds both a master’s and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin. (Return to Top) Joseph A. Hawkins is a senior study director at Westat in Rockville, Md. Prior to Westat, Hawkins was an evaluation specialist in the Montgomery County, Md., department of educational accountability, where he managed school-based research and evaluation studies. During his 19-year career with the school district, his research covered a wide variety of topics, such as student discipline, curricula, teacher training and induction, graduate follow-ups, technology, and school reform. Hawkins was also an elementary school teacher in the Peace Corps, and a preschool teacher and community youth organizer at a Washington, D.C. settlement house. He has also taught developmental reading at both Howard University and Prince George's Community College in Maryland. His publications include newspaper columns, book chapters, and journal articles on equity, racism, and intolerance. "Teaching Tools," a column Hawkins wrote for Teaching Tolerance Magazine and published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, won the 1994 EdPress Association of America Distinguished Achievement Award. He currently serves on the board of directors of TransCen, Inc., a national nonprofit organization that helps adults with disabilities find and maintain meaningful employment. (Return to Top) Rebecca Herman, American Institutes for Research Rebecca Herman, a managing research analyst at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), specializes in conducting and evaluating research on school improvement, as well as translating research to practice. Herman is the principal investigator of the U.S. Department of Education’s Impact Evaluation of Race to the Top and School Improvement Grants, and project director of the department’s study, Turning Around Chronically Low Performing Schools. In addition to her focus on school improvement, Herman specializes in the methodology of setting standards for the quality of outcomes research and evaluating evidence of program effectiveness against those standards. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology, specializing in education, at Johns Hopkins University. She trained and served as a teacher early in her career. (Return to Top) Alexander Mayer works on experimental and quasi-experimental impact analysis and research design at MDRC. His current research includes evaluations of the Achieving the Dream initiative, Completion by Design, and a long-term follow-up of the Opening Doors learning communities program at Kingsborough Community College. Prior to joining MDRC, he co-founded and led a small nonprofit organization for public schools in San Francisco and also worked as a software developer and consultant. Mayer holds a B.S. with double majors in physics and mathematics from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Davis. (Return to Top) Martin Orland serves as WestEd's director of evaluation and policy research. Orland directs a nationwide staff of methodologists, research scientists, content experts, and evaluators whose goal is to help address critical needs in the fields of education and human development. Immediately prior to joining WestEd, Orland served as senior program director of the Division of Behavioral, Social Sciences and Education and director of the Center for Education at the National Research Council. At the U.S. Department of Education, Orland held leadership positions at the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the National Education Goals Panel. Orland has written for both academic journals and government, and has regularly presented at international, national, and regional conferences in the fields of education and human development. He currently serves on the Editorial Board for Education Finance and Policy and has had two stints on the Board of Directors of the American Education Finance Association. He received a B.A. and M.A., both in political science, from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a Ph.D. in social science from Syracuse University. (Return to Top) Mark Schneider, American Institutes for Research Mark Schneider is currently vice president for new education initiatives at the American Institutes for Research and a scholar for the American Enterprise Institute. A former commissioner of the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, Schneider writes about a broad range of education issues: charter schools, consumer choice in education, the relationship between school facilities and academic outcomes, and higher education policy. He also studies and writes about urban politics and public policy. He is the author and coauthor of numerous scholarly books and articles, including the award-winning “Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools.” He was a distinguished professor of political science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, His 1989 book, “The Competitive City,” won special recognition by the American Political Science Association’s Urban Politics Section for its theoretical contribution to the study of urban politics. He held a Fulbright Hays Senior Fellowship at Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1974. (Return to Top) Susan Sporte, University of Chicago Consortium on School Research Sue Sporte is associate director for evaluation and data resources at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Her research interests include the relationship between the quality of elementary and secondary education and students' post-graduate opportunities, especially among students in urban school districts. Prior to joining the consortium, she worked as a community college math instructor and as a field evaluator for a not-for-profit agency. Most recently, she worked as assistant dean of undergraduate education at Framingham State College in Massachusetts. Sporte received a B.S. in mathematics from Michigan State University, an M.A. in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and an Ed.M. and Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. (Return to Top) Jon Supovitz, Consortium for Policy Research on Education Jon Supovitz is co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research on Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania. He conducts research on how education organizations use different forms of evidence to inquire about the quality and effect of their systems to support the improvement of teaching and learning in schools. While studying policy analysis at Duke University, Supovitz first focused on education leadership and policy. Before earning his doctorate at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, he gained middle and high school teaching experience in Queretaro, Mexico, and Boston, Mass. Upon completing his degree, Supovitz worked as a research associate at Horizon Research in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he directed the evaluation of the New Jersey Statewide Systemic Initiative and evaluated the effectiveness of electronic “netcourses” for teacher enhancement. He joined CPRE in 1997 as a senior researcher and the faculty at Penn GSE in 2005. (Return to Top) Brenda Turnbull, Policy Studies Associates Brenda Turnbull has been studying school improvement since the 1970s. She is co-principal investigator for the national evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education’s Comprehensive Centers, which provide technical assistance to states in implementing the No Child Left Behind Act, and she directs external evaluations for the Science of Learning Center on the Temporal Dynamics of Learning and for Teachers for a New Era at the University of Texas at El Paso. She previously evaluated the Public Education Network's policy initiatives and was principal investigator for the Study of District Strategies for Comprehensive School Reform. Previously, Turnbull co-directed the Longitudinal Evaluation of School Change and Performance in Title I Schools. Her experience with the Title I program also includes participation in Congressionally mandated studies since the 1980s, lead roles in numerous research and evaluation studies, and membership on the Chapter 1 Commission in the early 1990s. Turnbull received her Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. (Return to Top) |
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