Fellowship program enables 10 to research school reform strategies

Brown’s Advanced Studies Fellowship Program recently selected 10 scholars to research federal and national strategies of school reform in the United States.

The postdoctoral fellows will receive funds for a nine-month leave to pursue their research, and they will participate in a three-year program of seminars, mentoring and group discussions at Brown, according to program director Carl F. Kaestle, University Professor of education, history and public policy.

The interdisciplinary program, supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation and from the William and Flora T. Hewlett Foundation, will begin with a seminar in Providence from June 4 to 9.

The fellows:

• Marguerite Clarke, assistant professor of educational research at Boston College and associate director of the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy, will research state responses to the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.

• Elizabeth Hamel DeBray, research associate, Civil Rights Project at the Harvard Law School, will research the politics of education in the last Congress of President Bill Clinton and first Congress of George W. Bush.

• Kimberley Freeman, executive director of the Frederick Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund, will analyze schools nationwide that successfully promote African American achievement.

• David Gamson, assistant professor of education policy studies at The Pennsylvania State University, will research the evolution of the school district in America from 1950 to 2000.

• Nora Gordon, assistant professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, will investigate whether and under what circumstances Title I funds reach educationally and economically disadvantaged students.

• Christopher Lubienski, assistant professor in the College of Education at Iowa State University, will assess the degree of innovation in charter school classrooms.

• Kathryn A. McDermott, assistant professor of education and public policy and associate director of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, will research variable state responses to federal policies on standards and assessment in the 1980s and 1990s.

• Adam Nelson, assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will research the history of federal education programs in Boston.

• Douglas Reed, assistant professor of government at Georgetown University, will look at the waiver process for President Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation, and local efforts to resist or recast federal reform objectives.

• Elizabeth Rose, fellow at the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale and a visiting assistant professor at Trinity College, will research public funding of preschools since 1965.

In addition to Kaestle, the program’s faculty at Brown include Howard Chudacoff, University Professor of history; John Modell, professor of education, human development and sociology; Marion Orr, associate professor of political science and urban studies; James Patterson, Ford Foundation Professor of History; Warren Simmons, director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and senior lecturer in education; and Wendy Schiller, associate professor of political science and public policy.