EPP Vouchers Panel

Center for Education Research, Analysis, and Innovation
School of Education
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
PO Box 413
Milwaukee WI 53201
414-229-2716

August 28, 2000

Resources On Vouchers

An announcement fromthe Education Policy Project, in the Center for Education Research, Analysis,and Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Attention EducationWriters:

On August 28, 2000, The Washington Post published an account of a new study ofstudents receiving private school vouchers through a private organization:“Scores Improve for D.C. Pupils with Vouchers,” available on-line athttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33934-2000Aug27.html

The article detailedresults of a study by researchers affiliated with the University ofWisconsin-Madison, Harvard University, and elsewhere. The study itself isavailable on-line http://hdc-www.harvard.edu/pepg/dnw00r.pdf

Six education researchersare available to offer alternative perspectives on vouchers and on this newstudy. All are fellows of the Education Policy Project, based in the Center forEducation Research, Analysis, and Innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

They are:

1. David C. Berliner

Dean  of the Collegeof Education

University of Arizona

(480) 965-1329

berliner@asu.edu

David C. Berliner is Regents' Professor ofEducational Leadership and Policy Studies and of Psychology in Education atArizona State University, where he also serves as dean of the College ofEducation. His books include Educational Psychology (6th edition)(withN. L. Gage), The Manufactured Crisis (with B. J. Biddle), and TheHandbook of Educational Psychology (edited with R. L. Calfee). He hasserved as president of the American Educational Research Association and of theEducational Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association.Berliner is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the BehavioralSciences and a member of the National Academy of Education.

2. Walter C. Farrell,Jr.

University of NorthCarolina

(919) 962-8201

farrellw@bschool.unc.edu

Walter C. Farrell, Jr. is Professor of Social Work, PublicHealth, and Public Policy and Associate Director of the Urban InvestmentStrategies Center in the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise inthe Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at ChapelHill (UNC-CH). His research interests include the study of minority economicdevelopment issues, demographic change and interethnic conflict in contemporarysociety, public education and public school privatization, workforce diversity,and urban social issues. He has published more than 150 journal articles, bookchapters, scholarly essays, and research/technical reports.

3. Bruce Fuller

University of California atBerkeley

(510) 643-5362

b_fuller@uclink4.berkeley.edu

Bruce Fuller is Associate Professor, PublicPolicy and Education, the University of California at Berkeley, and codirectorof Policy Analysis for California Education, a policy research center jointlysponsored by UC-Berkeley and Stanford University. His current work focuses onfamily poverty and early education policy. As codirector of a Berkeley-Yaleinitiative, Growing Up in Poverty, Fuller is investigating how youngchildren's lives are being affected by welfare reform. Fuller also writes inthe area of decentralization and education policy, including school choice andcharter schools. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, Fuller taught at HarvardUniversity. He has also worked on education and family policy issues at the WorldBank and in the California legislature. Fuller's recent book (co-authored withSusan Holloway), Through My Own Eyes, traces the lives of 14 low incomewomen living in Central Boston, and uncovers factors that help to explain whysome families are able to move out of poverty while others are not. He receivedhis Ph.D. in Sociology and Education from Stanford University.

4. Luis A. Huerta

University of California atBerkeley

(510) 642-7223

lhuerta@uclink4.berkeley.edu

Luis A. Huerta is a research associate at PolicyAnalysis for California Education (PACE), located in the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education. His research focuses onissues of decentralization related to school reform and school choice, as wellas the impact of school finance inequities on implementing school reform. He isa contributing author to the recently released PACE report, titled SchoolChoice: Abundant Hopes, Scarce Evidence of Results (1999), and is also acontributing author to an upcoming book published by Harvard University Press,titled Inside Charter Schools: The Paradox of Radical Decentralization(B.Fuller, Editor).

5. Gary Orfield

Professor of Education andSocial Policy; Director, Harvard Project on

School Desegregation

Harvard University

(617) 496-4824

Gary_Orfield@harvard.edu

Gary Orfield is interested in the study of civilrights, urban policy, and minority opportunity. His research methods range fromoriginal survey research to analysis of national data sets to politicalanalysis of urban decision-making. He is coauthor of the books The ClosingDoor: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity (with C. Ashkinaze, 1991)and Dismantling Desegregation (with S. Eaton, 1996) and coeditor, withRichard Elmore and Bruce Fuller, of Who Chooses? Who Loses? Culture,Institutions and the Unequal Effects of School Choice (1996). He iscoauthor of the recently published report "Deepening Segregation inAmerican Public Schools" (1997). Other works include studies of changingpatterns of job opportunity, financial aid and college access, and civil rightsenforcement in higher education. 

6. Amy Stuart Wells

  University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles

(310) 206-8570

or,  (212) 355-3408

aswells@ucla.edu

Amy Stuart Wells is a Professor of EducationalPolicy at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. She isa sociologist of education whose research and writing has focused on race andeducational policies. She was the principal investigator of a two-and-a-halfyear study of charter school reform in ten school districts in Californiafunded by the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Currently, sheis conducting a study of adults who attended racially mixed high schools fundedby the Spencer Foundation. She is the editor of Multiple Meanings of CharterSchool Reform: Lessons from Ten California School Districts (forthcoming,Teachers College Press); co-author with Robert L. Crain of Stepping over theColor Line: African American Students in White Suburban Schools  (YaleUniversity Press, 1997);  author of Time to Choose: America at theCrossroads of School Choice Policy (Hill & Wang 1993).

The Education PolicyProject offers to the national discussion of education policy high qualityanalyses of school reform issues, and provides an analytical resource foreducators, journalists, citizens and others involved in public school reform.It is directed by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee education professor AlexMolnar.

You can visit the EducationPolicy Project on the Web at:  http://www.educationanalysis.org/.You can direct further inquiries to Professor Alex Molnar at 414-229-4592.