Past Research Advisory Panel Members
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Brandeis University
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia is the Samuel F. and Rose B. Gingold Professor of Human Development and Social Policy and Director of the Institute for Child Youth and Family Policy at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She has also taught at the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University. Ms. Acevedo-Garcia is also Project Director for diversitydata.org, an indicator project on racial/ethnic equity in U.S. metropolitan areas, as well as for diversitydatakids.org, which strives to be a comprehensive database of indicators on child wellbeing and opportunity by race/ethnicity across multiple sectors (e.g., education, health, neighborhoods) and geographies. Ms. Acevedo-Garcia has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the Harvard School of Public Health Excellence in Teaching Citation (2008), the Harvard School of Public Health Mentoring Award (2003), and the Charles Westoff Prize for Excellence in Demographic Research (awarded for dissertation research) (1996). She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and of the journal Social Problems, and also currently serves on the Social Science Advisory Board of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, as well as the National Coalition on School Diversity.
Jomills Henry Braddock II, University of Miami
Dr. Jomills Henry Braddock II is currently a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Miami. He is the former Chair of that department, as well as the founding Director of the Center for Research on Sport in Society (CRSS) at the University of Miami. Prior to joining the University of Miami in 1992, Dr. Braddock served as Director of the Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students (CDS) and principal research scientist at the Center for the Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Braddock was appointed, by former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, for two terms as a member of the National Educational Research Policies and Priorities Board (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement). Dr. Braddock has received many honors for his work, including the James E. Blackwell Founders Award (for distinguished service and lifetime achievement) from the Association of Black Sociologists (2008), and an appointment as a Member of the National Research Policies and Priorities Board, U. S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (appointed by Richard Riley, U. S. Secretary of Education 1995-1999, reappointed for six-year term 1999-2005).
Douglas Harris, Tulane University
Douglas N. Harris, Director of the Education Research Program at the Murphy Institute, is also Associate Professor of Economics, University Endowed Chair in Public Education, and the Director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (Era-New Orleans).
Richard Kahlenberg, The Century Foundation
Richard Kahlenberg has been called “the intellectual father of the economic integration movement” in K-12 schooling, and “arguably the nation’s chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education admissions.” He is also an authority on teachers’ unions, private school vouchers, charter schools, turnaround school efforts, labor organizing and inequality in higher education.
Kahlenberg’s articles have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, C-SPAN, MSNBC, and NPR. He has published a number of books, including:
- A Smarter Charter: Finding What Works for Charter Schools and Public Education (with Halley Potter) (Teachers College Press, 2014)
- Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right: Rebuilding a Middle-Class Democracy by Enhancing Worker Voice (with Moshe Marvit) (Century Foundation Press, 2012)
- Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race and Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2007)
- All Together Now: Creating Middle Class Schools through Public School Choice (Brookings Institution Press, 2001)
- The Future of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity as an Education Reform Strategy (2012)
- Improving on No Child Left Behind: Getting Education Reform Back on Track (2008)
Previously, Kahlenberg was a Fellow at the Center for National Policy, a visiting associate professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, and a legislative assistant to Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA). He also serves on the advisory board of the Pell Institute, the Albert Shanker Institute and the Research Advisory Panel of the National Coalition on School Diversity. In addition, he is the winner of the William A. Kaplin Award for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy Scholarship. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and cum laude from Harvard Law School. Between college and law school, he spent a year at the University of Nairobi School of Journalism as a Rotary Scholar.
Research in Action
- In “Turnaround Schools that Work: Moving Beyond Separate But Equal” (The Century Foundation, 2009), Richard makes the case that school turnaround policy should “recognize that school quality is driven by three sets of actors in a school community: students, parents, and faculty (teachers and principals).”
Jamie Lew, Rutgers University
Jamie Lew is associate professor of sociology at Rutgers—Newark. She received her Ph.D. in comparative education and sociology at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research area includes sociology of education, immigration and education, race and ethnicity. She focuses on school achievement and identities of immigrant children, with a particular focus on Asian American communities.
Professor Lew is also a faculty member of the Ph.D. American Studies Program, as well as the Ph.D. Urban Systems Program—a joint program with Rutgers, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). She is also a faculty affiliate of Center for Global Change and Governance, Urban Studies, Women Studies, Urban Education, Institute on Education Law and Policy, as well as the Institute of Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.
William Trent, University of Illinois
William Trent is Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Trent is a member of the Higher Learning Commission and the Higher Education Policy Advisory Board, and serves on the research advisory committee of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist and served as co-chair of the Committee on Educational Excellence and Testing Equity. His publications include works on school desegregation, access, success and desegregation in higher education, teacher education and equity issues in assessment.
Dr. Trent’s research on educational inequality has focused on school desegregation effects at the K-12 and postsecondary levels, benefits and consequences, social organization of school, status attainment research, co- and extracurricular activities, and comparative education. Dr. Trent has also focused on the impacts of race and ethnicity on social stratification and mobility, as well as on equality of opportunity. He also researches complex organization, social change, and policy.
Richard Valencia, The University of Texas at Austin
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.
Dr. Valencia’s research focuses on: the intellectual and academic development of racial/ethnic minority children; psychometric evaluation of intelligence and achievement tests; social and psychological foundations of minority schooling; minority school failure and success; and teacher testing and prospective minority teachers.