Co-Chairs (Term 2 years)

• Laura E. Hernández (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is a Senior Researcher and co-leader of the Deeper Learning team at the Learning Policy Institute where she specializes in qualitative investigations of whole child education.  By training, she is an interdisciplinary scholar, synthesizing political and sociological frameworks to investigate local, state, and federal policy and the factors that affect the equitable and democratic character of stakeholder engagement and policy implementation. She holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of California, Berkeley and is a former National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals such as the Educational Policy, Peabody Journal of Education, and Educational Policy Analysis Archives. Contact. 

• Caitlin Farrell is director of the National Center of Research in Policy and Practice (NCRPP) and associate research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.. She specializes in research on policy implementation and K–12 educational reform, with a particular focus on organizational theory. She uses mixed methods to explore the links between educational policy and the conditions that foster successful reform, including examining evidence use at the classroom, school, and system levels and the implementation and effects of different governance structures. Prior to joining NCRPP, she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied research-practice partnerships between school districts and research organizations. She holds a bachelor of arts from Dartmouth College, a master of science in teaching from Pace University, and a doctor of philosophy in urban education policy from the University of Southern California. Farrell’s work has been published in American Educational Research Journal, AERA Open, and Educational Policy, and her work has been supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and The Wallace Foundation.

Co-Program Chairs (Term 2 years) 

• Emily M. Hodge (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Leadership. Her work uses historical and qualitative methods, as well as social network analysis, to understand the changing nature of strategies for educational equity. Recent projects have explored how educational systems, schools, and teachers negotiate the tension between standardization and differentiation in the context of the Common Core State Standards, and the varied strategies state education agencies are using to support standards implementation. With David Gamson, Hodge is the co-editor of The Shifting Landscape of the American School District: Race, Class, Geography, and the Perpetual Reform of Local Control, 1935–2015. Hodge is a recipient of a Small Research Grant and a Conference Grant from the Spencer Foundation. Her research appears in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Policy, Review of Research in Education, and AERA Open, among others.

• Ayesha K. Hashim (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is an Assistant Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on district-level school reforms aimed at improving student achievement in underserved communities, including popular initiatives to (1) modernize instruction with technology, (2) expand school choice for students, and (3) improve teacher quality through performance evaluation and coaching. A mixed-methods researcher, Hashim draws on theories from economics, sociology, and organizational change to study the impacts of reforms on teacher and student outcomes along with leadership, organizational, and implementation conditions that shape these results. Hashim’s work has been published in Education Finance and Policy, Economics of Education Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Computers and Education, and Peabody Journal of Education. She received the New Scholar Award in 2017 from the Association for Education Finance and Policy.

Secretary (Term 2 years) 

• Carrie Sampson is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.  She earned her Ph.D. in Public Affairs from University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), M.S. in Cultural Foundations of Education from Syracuse University, a UNLV graduate certificate in Women’s Studies, and a B.S. in Economics from University of Nevada, Reno. Drawing from a range of critical theories, Carrie’s research focuses on educational leadership, community advocacy, and policymaking. Her most recent research projects on school board policymaking, district structures, community organizing, and school desegregation have been published in journals such as Education Administration Quarterly, American Journal of Education, Urban Education, Educational Policy, and Teachers College Record. She is also a mother-scholar of two beautiful children who keep her both grounded and inspired to continue our collective work toward educational equity. Contact.