About TCEP
About the director
Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and the Educational Policy and Planning Program within the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin where she also serves as the director of the University of Texas Center for Education Policy.
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). 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 Leaving Children Behind: How “Texas-style” Accountability Fails Latino Youth (State University of New York Press, 2004). Valenzuela currently serves as Associate Vice-President for School Partnerships at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Valenzuela also serves as director of the National Latino Education Research and Policy Project (or NLERAP a national-level initiative that aims to improve teacher quality and the teacher education pipeline for high school youth in Texas, California, Wisconsin, Chicago, New York, and Arizona. This work builds on the efforts and advocacy of Latino education and business leaders nationwide.
TCEP Staff
- Teresa Espino
- Patricia Lopez
A Brief History of TCEP
The University of Texas Center for Education Policy: A Brief History
Quite a number of individuals over the years have envisioned the development of a university-wide education policy center that would weigh in on policy debates and deliberations of the day on the basis of rigorous research. Such individuals included Professors Pedro Reyes, Jay Scribner, Alba Ortiz, Gerald Torres, and former provost and current UT System Chancellor Mark Yudoff. Anne Mauzy and her husband, the late Oscar Mauzy, similarly envisioned the establishment of such a center and in 2002 established the Oscar and Anne Mauzy Endowment for Educational Policy Studies and Research. Most of these individuals attested to the following structural problems in the development of educational policies in Texas:
First, the lack of connection among university scholars and researchers whose work —sometimes in similar or overlapping areas—is relevant to educational policy. For example, researchers who work in the area of education policy in the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs were disconnected from their Education Policy and Planning counterparts located in the Department of Educational Administration.
Second, the lack of connection between the university community and the larger field of policymaking that includes a variety of stakeholder communities, as well as such bodies as our local and state school boards, state legislatures, and Congress. At best, the connection has been a haphazard one with relations forged among only a few select faculty.
Third, the lack of interconnectedness between the university community and the larger community of stakeholders in public education. These stakeholders include business and industries that will employ today’s students in the future, and policymakers at the local, state, and national levels.
A prevailing concern was that because of these disconnects, the potential for enacting and implementing policy that was not research based was great. Additionally, the research trajectories of university faculty were not as fully informed as they would be with respect to policymaking were such lines of communication in place. Nevertheless, despite a decade-long attempt to establish a Center that would address these structural deficits, little happened until 2005.
In Fall 2005, the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, attempted to recruit nationally renowned Professor Angela Valenzuela to their campus where she was to direct an education policy center that would focus on bringing the immigrant, Mexican community into higher education. The University of Texas countered with a generous counter-offer that included the establishment of a university-wide policy center that would advance research-based policies that promote equity and excellence in public elementary, secondary and higher education. Located in the George I. Sanchez Building (SZB 518J), the Center’s doors opened in Spring 2006.
Location
George I. Sanchez Building (SZB 518J)
TCEP Advisory Board
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