Our Team

Christopher Lubienski

Director; Professor of Education Policy, IU School of Education

Christopher Lubienski is a Professor of education policy at Indiana University, and Director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. He is also a fellow with the National Education Policy Center, Guest Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Global Studies of Educational Leadership and Collaboration at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and Adjunct Professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia, where he also served as Sir Walter Murdoch Visiting Professor. He has been co-leader of the Scholar Strategy Network’s K-12 Working Group. His research focuses on education policy, reform, and the political economy of education, with a particular concern for issues of equity, access, and evidence use in policymaking.

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Paul Myers

Senior Evaluator and Associate Director

Paul Myers is Research Scientist and Associate Director at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University-Bloomington, where he serves as senior evaluation specialist. He is also a reviewer for Institute of Education Sciences What Works Clearinghouse. For the past decade, he has served as an educational researcher and evaluator for state and local education associations as well as private philanthropic organizations and institutions of higher education. Dr. Myers earned his PhD in Education Policy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Beyond his work in evaluation, his research interests include equity and access in educational markets.

Paul Faulkner

Graduate Director

Paul Faulkner is a Ph.D. student at Indiana University Bloomington, majoring in History, Philosophy, and Policy in Education with a specialization in Education Policy Studies and a minor in Music Education. A former K-12 performing arts educator, his research interests center on equity and access in arts and music education, as well as the sociohistorical development of the American high school marching band.

Charlotte Agger

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Charlotte Agger, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Counseling & Educational Psychology department with an appointment in Human Development. Her research interests include psychological and contextual influences related to the schooling experiences of historically marginalized adolescents and emerging adults, particularly rural, Black, and LGBTQ+ students. She is interested in how family and school contexts, especially STEM-related contexts, interact with students' motivation, feelings of belonging, performance, and persistence across high school and into college.

Alexander Cuenca

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Alexander Cuenca, Ph.D. is associate professor of curriculum and instruction and coordinator for the Middle/Secondary Social Studies Education program at Indiana University. His research focuses on social studies teacher education, the pedagogy of teacher education, and teacher education policy. Dr. Cuenca’s expertise has been featured in stories about teaching and teacher education in media outlets such as St. Louis Public Radio, Indiana Public Media, Associated Press, Scripps National Television Network, St. Louis Dispatch, and Indianapolis Star.

Janet R. Decker

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Janet R. Decker, J.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Indiana University’s School of Education. She teaches school law courses to undergraduate, master's, doctoral, and law students. Dr. Decker researches legal and policy issues in special education, as well as the legal literacy of educators and administrators.

Chad Lochmiller

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Chad Lochmiller, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies. His research focuses on policy and leadership issues, particularly those related to school and district improvement, resource allocation and management, and leadership preparation. He is a member of the National Faculty for Improvement Science with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Lochmiller has extensive experience with contract-based (applied) research and program evaluation, having worked as a Research Scientist for Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia at CNA (2013-2015). His experience includes working with federal and state education agencies, universities, school districts, non-profits, and philanthropies.

Sylvia Martinez

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Sylvia Martinez, Ph.D., is an associate professor jointly appointed in Education Leadership and Policy Studies and in the Latino Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the director of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity on Society. Her research focuses on Latino/a education, Latino/a ethnic identity development, and sociology of education issues more generally. Her past work examined whether Latino youth were academically challenged in their high school courses and whether students viewed these challenges as positive or negative. She also examines where and how Latino/a students get information about the college application process and how Latino ethnic identity among Latino/a undergraduates impacts participation at the Latino cultural center on campus.

Vanessa Miller

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Vanessa Miller, J.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University’s School of Education, where she specializes in education law. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on race and the law, school and university police, school crime and safety, prison education, and the role of the courts in education law and policy. She is particularly interested in the experiences of Latina students impacted by the school-prison nexus and the broader criminal legal system. Dr. Miller was the inaugural Postdoctoral Associate at the Race and Crime Center for Justice at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and worked at an education law firm in California.

Michele Moore

Clinical Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Dr. Michele Moore has a wide variety of experiences including over 23 years working with school districts. She has been a superintendent of Indiana School Districts for over 5 years as well as two years as Executive Director and CFO at Central Indiana Educational Service Center. She also prepared budgets, conducted superintendent and board training and consulted in the area of school finance. She has been a licensed CPA since 1995, holding stints as a field examiner with the Indiana State Board of Accounts and in private practice consulting with nonprofits and individuals. Dr. Moore’s expertise is in financial management for schools, understanding and working in declining enrollment, and reviews of ADM and school transfers for Indiana School Districts.

Frank Perrone

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Frank Perrone, PhD, is an assistant professor of educational leadership in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University. His primary research interests include principal preparation and labor markets, education policy, and the principal’s role in teacher career trajectories.

Amy Pickard

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Amy Pickard is an assistant professor in Indiana University's Adult Education program and a qualitative researcher whose interests center on policy, equity, and instruction in adult literacy/adult basic education. Her years as an adult literacy teacher in a range of community settings led to her current research interests in the impact of federal and state policy on everyday practice. She is particularly interested in how marginalized adults define their own learning needs and how to support public policy and publicly-funded programs in meeting these needs.

Jennifer Rippner

Lecturer, IU School of Education

Jennifer Rippner, Ph.D., J.D., is a lecturer in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the IU School of Education. She has spent most of her career leading and studying state education policy, including serving as a Governor's education advisor and as a Senior Legal and Policy advisor at a national law firm. Her research centers on the intersection of K-12 and higher education law, governance, and policy.

Dubravka Svetina Valdivia

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Dubravka Svetina Valdivia, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Qualitative & Quantitative Research Methodology, in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, School of Education. She has expertise in educational assessment and psychological measurement, (multidimensional) item response theory, multi-stage testing, dimensionality assessment, differential item functioning/measurement invariance, and psychometric modeling, including Bayesian and cognitive diagnostic models.

Yusuf Canbolat

Ph.D. student, IU School of Education

Yusuf Canbolat is a Ph.D. candidate in education policy studies at Indiana University School of Education, with a doctoral minor in econometrics at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. His research focuses on educational equity, school choice, quantitative methods, and large-scale student assessments. He received Strategic Data Project Fellowship from the Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research. He also received a summer fellowship from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) doctoral internship from the American Institute for Research.

Moaaz Hamid

Ph.D. student, IU School of Education

Moaaz Hamid is a Ph.D. student in History, Philosophy, and Policy in Education, specializing in Education Policy Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests, stemming from his work in education development sector in Pakistan, are global education policy, non-state actors in education, and knowledge utilization in education policy sphere.

Jina Kim

Ph.D. Student, IU School of Education

Jina Kim is a Ph.D. student in Education Policy Studies with a major concentration in education law, and a minor concentration in Geography. Her research interests center around equity in the education policy process, legislative effects on educational equity, and geospatial analysis of educational opportunity. Prior to pursuing her degree at Indiana University Bloomington, she worked at the National Assembly Research Service in South Korea as a research assistant.

T. Jameson Brewer

Associate Professor, University of North Georgia

T. Jameson Brewer, Ph.D. is an associate professor of social foundations of education at the University of North Georgia, a fellow with the National Education Policy Center, and a scholar at the Scholars Strategy Network. His research focuses on education policy, the impacts that privatization (e.g., vouchers, charter schools, homeschooling, and alternative teacher certification) have on public schools, and the role that political ideologies play in shaping discourse and practices surrounding education.

Mark Chin

Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University

Mark Chin is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy and Inequality in the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. He studies how public education in the U.S. can help combat racial and socioeconomic inequality and uses rigorous quantitative methodology to identify the causal impacts of different policies, programs, and interventions in schools on students' outcomes. His current projects focus on school integration, school choice, racial bias in education, and how schools support the development of antiracist youth.

Elizabeth DeBray

Professor, University of Georgia

Elizabeth DeBray, Ed.D. is a professor in the department of LIfe Long Education, Administration, and Policy at The University of Georgia. Her research interests include the politics of federal education policy, policy implementation, and interest group politics/policy networks.

Priya Goel

Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong

Dr. Priya Goel is an assistant professor of education leadership and policy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. Her research examines the relationships between performance accountability policies, school culture, and the identities and practices of school leaders.

Huriya Jabbar

Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin

Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor in the Educational Policy and Planning program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research uses sociological and critical theories to examine how market-based ideas in PK-12 and higher education shape inequality, opportunity, and democracy in the U.S. She is currently studying school choice policy and school leaders' behavioral responses to competition; choice and decision-making in higher education; and teacher job choices, recruitment, and retention.

Joel Malin

Associate Professor, Miami University

Joel Malin is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at Miami University. He is broadly interested in strengthening the connections between research, policy, and educational practice. His research primarily focuses on knowledge mobilization, the politics of education, and cross-sector collaboration.

Bekisizwe S. Ndimande

Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio

Bekisizwe S. Ndimande, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of curriculum studies at The University of Texas at San Antonio. His research focuses on school choice and school desegregation policies, particularly the impact of such policies on Black communities in post-apartheid South Africa and beyond.

Laura Perry

Professor, Murdoch University

Laura Perry is Professor of Education at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. She draws on the fields of education policy, comparative education, and sociology of education to examine the causes and consequences of educational inequalities, as well as the policies that can ameliorate them. Particular research interests are educational marketization, school funding, school socioeconomic composition and segregation, and school stratification.

Amanda U. Potterton

Associate Professor, University of Kentucky

Amanda U. Potterton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky. Her research centers on the impact of marketization and privatization initiatives (e.g., school choice) on impoverished, ELL, and special education students.

Emma Rowe

Senior Lecturer at Deakin University

Emma Rowe is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Education at Deakin University. Emma is a recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) 2021-2024, studying venture philanthropy in public education. In 2022 she is a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy, Indiana University. Emma’s work is interested in education policy and reform with a particular interest in how reforms improve educational equity.

Janelle Scott

Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Janelle Scott is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the School of Education. She holds the Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities, and is the Chair of the Race, Diversity, and Educational Policy Cluster of the Othering and Belonging Institute. Her research explores the relationship between education, policy, and equality of opportunity, and centers on the racial politics of public education, the politics of school choice, marketization, and privatization, and the role of elite and community-based advocacy in shaping public education. Scott is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and a Member of the National Academy of Education. In 2017, she was awarded a Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award by the UC Berkeley Graduate Division, and in 2014, she was awarded a Distinguished Scholar Award by the American Educational Research Association's Committee on Scholars of Color.

Federico Waitoller

Associate Professor, University of Illinois

Federico Waitoller is an associate professor at the department of special education at the University of Illinois. His research focuses on urban inclusive education. His work examines the experiences of students with disabilities with market-driven educational reforms and teacher learning and pedagogies for inclusive education. His latest book is Excluded by Choice: Urban Students with Disabilities in the Education Marketplace by Teachers College Press. He is currently researching how parents of students with disabilities in Basque Country engage with school choice.

Ee-Seul Yoon

Associate Professor, University of Manitoba

Ee-Seul Yoon is an Associate Professor in the areas of Educational Administration, Leadership, and Policy at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Dr. Yoon’s scholarship is interdisciplinary, drawing from sociology, geography, and critical policy studies. Her research aims to better understand how the marketization and privatization of education impact equity, decolonization, and integration in Canadian education systems. Her doctoral dissertation received the AERA Social Context of Education Division’s Distinguished Dissertation Award. Funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRCC), her post-doctoral work advanced a cutting-edge mixed-methods geospatial approach to understanding school choice inequity. Dr. Yoon is currently conducting two SSHRCC-funded studies that spatially examine the multiple inequities facing diverse learners and school leaders in the era of neoliberalism and market-based reforms. To see her publication list, visit her Google Scholar Profile.