Current Research Projects
Dr. Pedro Reyes, Ashbel Smith Professor in Education Policy
Pedro Reyes’ current research focuses on Education and Opportunity. He is pursuing two related questions; the first question is focused on education transitions to postsecondary education and adulthood. Four primary research questions are being explored in this area of study: 1) Who persists through high school; 2) Who gains access to postsecondary institutions and why? What is the role of families and others in successful transitions?; 3) Who persists through college and why, and; 4) Who eventually completes their postsecondary education and earns some type of degree or certificate and why? In order to address these sets of questions, my research focuses on two separate cohorts of Texas students. Students in the first cohort were high school freshman in the school year 2003-04, while students in the second cohort were high school seniors in the 2003-04 school year. As we began following Cohort 1 students in their freshman year, this cohort was studied to determine their high school persistence patterns, their initial college access rates, and the factors that predicted access to postsecondary institutions. The second cohort of students graduated from high school in 2004 and had thus been out of high school for six years at the time of this study, this cohort was analyzed for its postsecondary persistence patterns and its four- and six-year college graduation rates. These student cohorts are being followed to understand their placement and outcomes in the labor market.
My second research question is focused on learning opportunities for high poverty high school students. This work is focused on policy reform models that stratify learning opportunities for children of poverty in high schools. Most rigorous research on high schools has focused on evaluating the impact of comprehensive school reform models. Researchers at MDRC have recently completed impact studies of four popular school reform models—Career Academies, First Things First, Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD), and Talent Development—together being implemented in more than 2,700 high schools across the country. These interventions were tested in 16 school districts, using rigorous research methods (i.e., random assignment and comparative time series designs) and the findings suggest that positive change is associated with a combination of instructional improvement and structural changes in school organization and class schedules. They also concluded that transforming schools into small learning communities and assigning students to faculty advisors increased students’ feelings of connectedness to their teachers. In addition to this research, there is considerable less rigorous research examining the relationship between various high school characteristics and student outcomes. For the most part, these studies are correlational and do not allow causal conclusions. Still they suggest factors and conditions related to secondary school performance and broaden our understanding, at least theoretically, of secondary schools. Thus, I am following key education policies to further study to how such policies affect the stratification of learning opportunities for high poverty high school students.
Dr. Jeff Wayman
Dr. Wayman's teaching and research interests focus on the use of data for school improvement, and quantitative research methods. Dr. Wayman's research on data-based decision-making includes methods of effective leadership for data use among faculties, systemic supports that enable widespread, independent teacher use of student data, and software that delivers student data to educators. Prior to joining the UT faculty, Dr. Wayman worked at Johns Hopkins University with the Center for
Social Organization of Schools, at Colorado State University in the area of prevention research, and as a junior high math teacher in Kansas City and Salt Lake City.
Dr. Wayman is currently Principal Investigator on a three-year project funded by the Spencer Foundation, "The Data-Informed District: Implementation and Effects of a District-Wide Data Initiative." In this project, Dr. Wayman and his research team are working with three Central Texas districts to implement structures that will help these districts become more efficient and effective in their use of data for educational improvement. In addition, Dr. Wayman is leading another research team in a two-year evaluation of the effects of the Acuity data system on student achievement in a large urban district.
Dr. Angela Valenzuela
Angela Valenzuela is a professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction
and Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin.
She is also the director of the newly formed Texas Center for Education
Policy, a university-wide policy center at the University of Texas at
Austin. A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching
positions were in Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas
(1990-98), as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Mexican
American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). Her research
and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, minority
youth in schools, educational policy, and urban education reform. She
is also the author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and
the Politics of Caring (State University of New York Press, 1999) and
editor of Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability
Fails Latino Youth (State University of New York Press, 2004).
Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig
Julian
Vasquez Heilig obtained his Ph.D. in Education Administration and
Policy Analysis from Stanford University. He also holds a Masters of
Education Policy in the Center for the Study of Higher and Post
secondary Education Policy and a Bachelor’s in History and Psychology
from the University of Michigan.
His current research includes quantitatively examining how high-stakes testing and accountability-based reforms and incentive systems impact urban minority students. Additionally, his qualitative work considers the sociological mechanisms by which student achievement and progress occur in relation to specific NCLB-inspired accountability policies in districts and schools for students of different kinds. Julian’s research interests also include issues of access, diversity and equity in higher education.
Dr. Jennifer Jellison Holme
Dr.
Jennifer Jellison Holme is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Educational Administration. Her research agenda is centered on the
politics and implementation of educational policy, with two major areas
of focus: 1) the implementation of accountability policies, including
test-driven accountability measures (exit exams and NCLB) as well as
market-driven accountability reforms (charter schools and school
choice); and 2) the implementation of policies designed to foster
greater equity and diversity in schools, particularly school
desegregation policy. Her work has been published in The Harvard Educational Review (2002) and Equity and Excellence in Education
(2005). She is currently conducting a study of California’s high
schools’ organizational and instructional responses to the state’s exit
examination requirement.