People

Project Leadership

Susan Dynarski, Susan Dynarski, Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, is an economist who studies and teaches the economics of education and quantitative methods for program evaluation. She is a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Princeton University. She is an editor of The Journal of Labor Economics and Education Finance and Policy. Dynarski's current research focuses on the impact of charter schools on academic achievement, the elasticity of private school attendance with respect to price, historical trends in inequality in educational attainment, and the optimal design of financial aid. Her previous research explored the impact of grants and loans on college attendance, the impact of state policy on college completion, and the distributional consequences of tax incentives for college saving.

Kenneth Frank is a Professor of Measurement and Quantitative Methods at the College of Education, Michigan State University (MSU). He has extensive experience in multilevel modeling and the analysis of large data sets, including the Adolescent Health Data Set. Frank has also published several papers on ways to quantify the sensitivity of inferences to omitted variables and non-representative samples.

Mary Alice Galloway is the Interim Director of the Office of School Reform, a newly formed office of the Michigan Department of Education focused on turning around low-performing schools. Previously, she was the interim director of the Office of School Improvement. OSI promotes student learning and achievement by providing statewide leadership over a wide range of programs, including the Michigan Merit Curriculum. Galloway has worked in the Michigan Department of Education since 1989, and has served, among other responsibilities, as the interim director for the Office of School Excellence and as the Senior Advisor to the Chief Academic Office.

Thomas Howell is the Director of the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). Located in the Office of the State Budget, CEPI collects and reports data about Michigan's K-12 public schools, including the key administrative data sets that will be used in this project. He has over 15 years of experience with Michigan educational data, was at the Michigan Department of Education from 1994-2000, and has been part of CEPI since 2000.

Brian Jacob is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy, Professor of Economics, and Director of the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy (CLOSUP) at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an Executive Committee Member of the National Poverty Center. His current research focuses on urban school reform and teacher labor markets; other recent work examines school choice, education accountability programs, and housing vouchers. Jacob has extensive analytic experience using regression discontinuity methodology, and has also has studied high school graduation requirements.

Joseph Martineau, Ph.D. is the Director of the Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability (OEAA) within the Michigan Department of Education. Martineau received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in the Measurement and Quantitative Methods Program in 2004, and is widely published in both academic and applied settings. Martineau's psychometric expertise makes him a nationally recognized expert on assessment.

Barbara Schneider is the John A. Hannah Chair and University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education, the Measurement and Quantitative Methods Program and the Sociology Department at Michigan State University. Schneider has extensive experience developing and directing large research teams engaged in multi-year studies using methodologies similar to those proposed here. Most importantly for this study, Schneider has held a subcontract from the Regional Educational Laboratory-Midwest (REL-Midwest) at Learning Point Associates to produce fast-response studies for the state of Michigan. As part of this work, she has led a research team analyzing Michigan state administrative data, in collaboration with the Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI) and the Michigan Department of Education (MDE).

Staff

Monica Bhattis a second-year doctoral student in Education Policy at the University of Michigan School of Education. She received her M.P.P. from the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University and her B.A. in Public Policy in Education and Spanish also from Vanderbilt University. Prior, she worked as a Research and Policy Associate for the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Midwest at Learning Point Associates in Chicago, IL and for the National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality (TQ Center) in Washington, D.C. She also taught English in a bilingual public school in Madrid, Spain as a Fulbright Scholar. Her primary research interests include policy formation and evaluation at the state- and federal-levels and postsecondary preparation and access.

Quentin Brummet is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Economics at Michigan State University. He received his M.A. in Economics from Michigan State and his B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from Illinois Wesleyan University. His primary research interests include school finance reform, policy evaluation, and applied econometrics.

Kri Burkander is a second-year doctoral student and John A. Hannah fellow in Educational Policy at Michigan State University. Her research interests include college access for low-income and minority students, P-20 alignment, and educational equity. She was a high school teacher and administrator for four years, and spent two years as a coach with the Michigan Department of Education's Technical Assistance and Coaching Support System (TACSS) initiative. Kri holds a BA in Psychology from Antioch College, and an MSW from the University of Michigan.

Paul Burkander is entering his third year of Michigan State University's PhD program in Economics, and was accepted into MSU's Economics of Education Fellowship program in 2010. He graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Michigan University with a BS in Mathematics and Honors Economics. Paul was honored as the EMU Political Science student of the year in 2008, and served as President of his school's chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honors Society. He competed successfully with EMU's Model United Nations team, Fed Challenge team, and Mathematical Modeling team.

Steven Hemelt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Ford School of Public Policy. His research interests focus on education economics and policy. He is interested in how accountability structures affect students and schools, the influence of teachers on students, and how tuition changes affect college choice. In the past, he has studied the impact of additional learning time on student performance, and the usefulness of college double majors in the labor market. Prior to joining the Ford School, he was an Assistant Professor of Politics at Cornell College. He received undergraduate degrees in Economics and Spanish, a Master's degree in Economic Policy Analysis, and his Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Rachel Rosen

Elizabeth Covay

Emily House is a second-year doctoral student in Quantitative Research Methods in Education at the University of Michigan School of Education. She received her M.A. in Public Policy from the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University, and earned her B.S in Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. She taught high school Social Studies and Special Education as a Teach for America corps member in St. Louis, Missouri. Her research interests include gifted education, school choice, and postsecondary preparation and access.

Joshua Hyman is a doctoral candidate in economics and public policy at the University of Michigan. His fields of interest are labor economics, the economics of education, and public finance. His research examines the long-term impacts of educational interventions during childhood and focuses on reducing inequality in postsecondary education. Josh received his B.A. in quantitative economics from Tufts University in 2005 and his M.A. in economics from the University of Michigan in 2010. Prior to graduate school, he worked as a research assistant at Abt Associates Inc.

Venessa Keesler, Ph.D., the MCER State of Michigan Project Manager and is the Manager of Evaluation Research and Accountability in the Office of Educational Assessment and Accountability for the Michigan Department of Education. She holds her doctorate from the Measurement and Quantitative Methods program at Michigan State University, and has a bachelor's degree in sociology from Harvard University. Venessa's research focuses on the use of large-scale administrative state data sets to address pressing education policy issues. Her dissertation analyzed teacher labor supply in Michigan to meet the demands of the Michigan Merit Curriculum. Venessa has worked as a research assistant for the REL-Midwest, and as a consultant for organizations such as the National Center for Education Statistics, the Michigan Department of Education, and Learning Point Associates.

Kaitlin Obenauf is a second year doctoral student in Educational Policy at the Michigan State University College of Education. She holds B.A. degrees in both Psychology and Economics at Michigan State University. At MSU, she received awards for a paper discussing women and the gender gap in math and science. To give back to her community, Obenauf taught second and third grade on Chicago's south side for Teach for America. She assumed leadership roles in Chicago and secured grant funding for additional resources. Connecting learning to real world circumstances by instituting a classroom mini-economy, Obenauf helped raise students' reading and math achievement scores dramatically. She was granted two Segal Americorp Education Awards for national and community service in teaching. As a Dean's Scholar in Educational Policy and a recipient of the new IES award in the economics of education at MSU, Obenauf is honored to belong to a community of scholars and hopes to further her research on alternative certification, teacher preparation, and teacher culture and its affect on one's job satisfaction.

Guan K. Saw is a doctoral student in Measurement and Quantitative Methods at the Michigan State University College of Education. He received his Masters in Education from National Taiwan Normal University and his B.Eng. from University Technology of Malaysia. Upon graduating from college, he worked as a mathematics teacher in a high school and also served as an administrator for a nationwide educational organization in Malaysia. His research interests lie in causal inference in educational research, educational effectiveness, and social context in education.

Nathaniel Schwartz is a fourth-year doctoral student in Social Foundations and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Education. He received his Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan's Ford School and his A.B. from Harvard University. Previously, he taught high school science through Teach For America in the Mississippi Delta and also served as a founding teacher for a charter network in Chicago. His primary research interests include large-scale instructional intervention, teacher accountability, and student mobility.

Christopher Zbrozek holds masters degrees in public policy and information from the University of Michigan. During his graduate education, he completed an internship in the Office of Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm working on education policy issues. He also interned at the United States Government Accountability Office on the Education, Workforce and Income Security team, and he has assisted the City of Detroit Budget Department on its restructuring efforts. His interests include the effects of education on economic mobility, performance measurement, municipal finance - and baking bread.