Abby is a doctoral student in the Policy, Politics, and Leadership cluster. Her research focuses on decision making and implementation using concepts from organizational theory. Her current research project is a three-year study about how district leaders in California are using their federal and state stimulus funds. Finance scholars have found that money does matter in education, but there are still questions about how district leaders make decisions when new dollars flow and why district leaders opt to prioritize dollars toward certain programs over others. Using qualitative research...
Note: I have retired from teaching and (with mixed emotions) no longer accept new graduate students.
Bruce Fuller, a sociologist, delves into how institutions, large and small, try to lift the learning and growth of children. This prompts the question of how local actors, educators, and policy players can work smarter to lift organizations.
Recent work delves into:
How schools in Los Angeles raised the achievement of students for two decades prior to the pandemic, reported in ...
Mark Wilson's interests focus on measurement and applied statistics. His work spans a range of issues in measurement and assessment from the development of new statistical models for analyzing measurement data, to the development of new assessments in subject matter areas such as science education, patient-reported outcomes and child development, to policy issues in the use of assessment data in accountability systems.
He has recently published three books: the first, Constructing measures: An item response modeling approach (Erlbaum), is an introduction to modern...
Michelle D. Young, PhD, is dean and professor of Berkeley School of Education.
Young began her tenure at Berkeley on June 15, 2023, after serving three years as dean and professor of educational leadership and policy at Loyola Marymount University's School of Education.
At LMU, she created new positions devoted to diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism and justice and embedded that work within the school’s strategic plan. Prior to LMU, Young was a professor of educational leadership and policy, chair of the Department of Education leadership, Foundations and Policy at the...
Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor at Berkeley School of Education exploring issues of equity and justice in higher education. As an organizational theorist, she seeks to understand how Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) enact an organizational identity for serving Latine/x students and minoritized populations. She draws on qualitative methods including case studies, interviews, observations, and participatory research methods to explore how organizations change from predominately white to minoritized-serving. Dr. Garcia also examines the experiences of administrators, faculty, and staff...
Jennifer A. Delaney is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Delaney’s research investigates higher education finance questions with public policy importance. She uses advanced statistical techniques on large scale datasets with an emphasis on quasi-experimental designs. Her scholarship has fallen into two broad categories: higher education finance and higher education policy, admissions, and public support. Intertwining these two areas of scholarship, her work addresses public policy in higher education across institutional, state,...
Jeremy Martin is a doctoral candidate and Eugene Cota Robles Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He studies the politics of philanthropic organizations and their involvement in K-12 public education with a particular focus on foundations that are created by Black people. More broadly, Jeremy’s research explores the politics of elite and non-state actors in public education.
Jeremy is the recipient of the University of California’s Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award and is the inaugural Junior Visiting Fellow at ESSEC Business School’s Philanthropy Chair....
Tolani Britton uses quasi-experimental methods to explore the impact of policies on students’ transition from secondary school to higher education, as well as access and retention in higher education. Recent work explores whether the disproportionate increase in incarceration of Black males for drug possessions and manufacture increased gaps in college enrollment rates by race and gender over two time periods- after the passage of the Anti-Drug Act from 1986 - 1993 and after the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act from 1995 - 2000.
Enrique Valencia López is a PhD student in the Policy, Politics and Leadership cluster at the School of Education. His research interests relate to three broad areas: the stratification of education by gender, immigration status and ethnicity; the measurement of teacher working conditions and well-being; and education in Latin America.
Before coming to Berkeley, Enrique worked for Mexico’s National Institute for Educational Evaluation and Assessment (INEE) in both the Policy and Indicators area. During that time, he co-authored Mexico’s first report on the...
Ja’Nya is a second year PhD student in the Education Policy, Politics and Leadership cluster. She is a proud East Coast native, raised in the “DMV”: DC, Maryland, Virginia region. She started her career as a Special Education Teacher and case manager, eventually transitioning into roles around youth mentorship, and race and identity facilitation for educators.
As a practitioner and researcher she is interested in understanding communal ties amongst school based stakeholders (parents, students and teachers) during the plight of policy shifts. She looks at opportunities for shift in...
