About the AGI

AGI Faculty Co-Chairs
		Ronald Ferguson, AGI Director and Faculty Co-Chair, Lecturer In Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Senior Research Associate, Wiener Center for Social Policy
		Ronald F. Ferguson is an economist who has taught at the Kennedy School of Government since 1983. His publications cover issues in education policy, youth development programming, community development, economic consequences of skill disparities, and state and local economic development. His research for the past several years has focused on racial achievement gaps, appearing in publications of the National Research Council, the Brookings Institution, the U.S. Department of Education, Educational Research Service and others. He is the creator and director of the Tripod Project for School improvement, including a component called "Teaching the Hard Stuff" (THS). In THS, groups of teachers brainstorm to figure out why students in one teacher's classroom did poorly on a particular assignment (an "Item of Hard Stuff"). Then they propose instructional responses for the presenting teacher to try. During the late 1990s, Ferguson was Chairman of the National Community Development Policy Analysis Network. In that role, he co-edited the volume Urban Problems and Community Development, published by Brookings Institution Press. Ferguson participates in a variety of consulting and policy advisory activities on issues of education, employment, youth development, and urban development. These have recently included, for example, work with public school districts on racial and ethnic achievement gaps, expert testimony in school finance cases, and committees at the National Research Council dealing with educational testing, school reforms, and youth development programming. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his PhD from MIT, both in economics.
		Richard Murnane, Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society, AGI Faculty Co-Chair
		Richard Murnane is an economist who focuses his research on the relationships between education and the economy, teacher labor markets, the determinants of children's achievement, and strategies for making schools more effective. In his book Who Will Teach? Policies that Matter (with Judith Singer and John Willett), Murnane shows that teachers' salaries and certification requirements strongly affect the composition of the public-school teaching force. Murnane's 1996 book Teaching the New Basic Skills, coauthored by MIT professor Frank Levy, explains how changes in the U.S. economy have increased the skills that high-school graduates need to earn a middle-class living, and shows how schools need to change to provide all students with the requisite skills. In spring 2004, Princeton University Press published Murnane and Levy's book, The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market. This book shows how the spread of information technology has increased the value of some human skills and decreased the value of others. It also explains how education and training programs need to respond to new labor market realities. In 2005, Murnane and two Harvard colleagues edited Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning. It stems from work Murnane started in 2001, helping the central office of the Boston Public Schools to better support the efforts of BPS schools in learning from student assessment results. Murnane is currently working with HGSE Professor John B. Willett on a book describing how improvements in research design and analysis strategies can help educational researchers to make valid causal inferences in educational policy research.
		Charles Ogletree, Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, Director, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and justice, AGI Faculty Co-Chair
		Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, and Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, is a prominent legal theorist who has made an international reputation by taking a hard look at complex issues of law and by working to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution for everyone equally under the law. Professor Ogletree has examined these issues not only in the classroom, on the Internet, and in the pages of prestigious law journals, but also in the everyday world of the public defender in the courtroom and in public television forums where these issues can be dramatically revealed. He furthers dialogue by insisting that the justice system protect rights guaranteed to those citizens by law. Professor Ogletree is the Founding and Executive Director of Harvard Law School’s new Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, named in honor of the visionary lawyer who spearheaded the litigation in Brown v. Board of Education. The Institute opened in September 2005, and focuses on a variety of issues relating to race and justice, and will sponsor research, hold conferences, and provide policy analysis.

AGI Affiliated Faculty
	John Diamond, Associate Professor of Education
	John B. Diamond is an Associate Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a sociologist who studies how race, ethnicity, and social class intersect with school leadership, practices, and policies to shape the educational opportunities and outcomes of children. His recent research includes a four-year study of urban school leadership (The Distributed Leadership Study); work on the implementation of high stakes accountability policy in urban schools; a study of race, social class, and student achievement in suburban schools; and a study of the development and diffusion of teachers' expectations of students. For the last study, Diamond was the recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship. In addition to the NAE/Spencer Fellowship, he has received research awards from the National Science Foundation and the American Educational Research Association/Institute for Education Sciences. He is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study working on his current book project tentatively entitled Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (with Amanda Lewis). Teachers College Press will publish his co-edited volume Distributed Leadership in Practice this summer.
	Thomas Hehir, Professor of Practice
	Tom Hehir served as director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs from 1993 to 1999. As director, he was responsible for federal leadership in implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Hehir played a leading role in developing the Clinton administration's proposal for the 1997 reauthorization of the IDEA, 90 percent of which was adopted by Congress. In 1990, he was associate superintendent for the Chicago Public Schools, where he was responsible for special education services and student support services. In this role, he implemented major changes in the special education service delivery system, which enabled Chicago to reach significantly higher levels of compliance with the IDEA and resulted in the eventual removal of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights as overseer. Hehir served in a variety of positions in the Boston Public Schools from 1978 to 1987, including that of director of special education from 1983 to 1987. An advocate for children with disabilities in the education system, he has written on special education, special education in the reform movement, due process, and least restrictive environment issues. Ed.D., Harvard University
	Karen Mapp, Lecturer on Education
	Karen L. Mapp is a lecturer on education at HGSE. Her research and practice expertise is in the areas of educational leadership and educational partnerships among schools, families, and community members. Mapp joined HGSE in January 2005 after serving for 18 months as the interim deputy superintendent of Family and Community Engagement for the Boston Public Schools (BPS). While working with the BPS, she continued to fulfill her duties as president of the Institute for Responsive Education (IRE), a research, policy, and advocacy organization that conducts research on and advocates for effective school, family, and community partnerships that support the educational development of children. Mapp joined IRE in 1997 as project director for the Boston Community Partners for Students' Success initiative. She was appointed vice president in May 1998 and president in September 1998. Mapp holds a doctorate and master's of education from HGSE in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy, a master's in Counselor Education from Southern Connecticut State University, and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1997, she was awarded a Spencer Dissertation Fellowship for her research on how and why families are involved in their children's educational development.
	Mica Pollock, Associate Professor
	Mica Pollock, an anthropologist of education, studies how youth and adults struggle daily to discuss and address issues of racial difference, discrimination, and fairness in school and community settings. Her first book, Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School, winner of the 2005 AERA Outstanding Book Award and an American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Book Award, 2005, explores when it helps and harms to talk in racial terms about people and patterns in schools. Colormute introduces Pollock's concept of colormuteness, or the deletion of race labels from everyday and policy discourse. The book pinpoints six core race talk dilemmas that plague education and demonstrates that while talking about race has pitfalls, not talking about race can exacerbate orders of inequality. Pollock's forthcoming book, Because of Race: How Americans Debate Harm and Opportunity in Our Schools (Princeton University Press, 2008), builds on her experience (1999-2001) working in the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, where she investigated and addressed claims of discrimination in schools. Because of Race explores ongoing American debates over opportunity denials experienced by students and families of color in educational settings. The book examines rebuttals to demands for the daily provision of specific opportunities within schools and districts. Pollock argues that in an era when racial patterns like “achievement gaps” are produced by countless interactions across multiple domains and racial inequality is no longer ordered and applauded explicitly by laws and policies, “everyday justice” analysis provides the necessary ingredient for opportunity analysis today: detailed consideration of the provision of named opportunities by specific actors within complex systems. Pollock is editor of a forthcoming book for educators, Everyday Antiracism: Concrete Ways to Successfully Navigate the Relevance of Race in School (The New Press, 2008). In Everyday Antiracism, dozens of experts in race and education studies offer educators short, clear, and concrete strategies for equalizing opportunity across racial lines on a moment to moment basis. Designed for educator inquiry groups or professional development efforts, Everyday Antiracism sparks ongoing inquiry into the most complex race issues of an educator’s typical day. Pollock is also spearheading The Project on the Preparation of Educators for Diversity, a new national research effort examining efforts by universities, nonprofits, and school districts to prepare and assist teachers to serve diverse populations. Pollock previously taught high school in California. She is a member of the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association. Before receiving her M.A. in anthropology and her Ph.D. in anthropology of education from Stanford, Pollock taught high school in California.
	Robert Schwartz, Professor of Practice
	Robert Schwartz held a wide variety of leadership positions in education and government before joining the HGSE faculty in 1996. From 1997 to 2002, Schwartz also served as president of Achieve, Inc., an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit organization created by governors and corporate leaders to help states improve their schools. From 1990 to 1996, Schwartz directed the education grantmaking program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nation's largest private philanthropies. In addition to his work at HGSE, Achieve, and The Pew Charitable Trusts, Schwartz has been a high-school English teacher and principal; an education advisor to the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts; an assistant director of the National Institute of Education; a special assistant to the president of the University of Massachusetts; and executive director of The Boston Compact, a public-private partnership designed to improve access to higher education and employment for urban high-school graduates. Schwartz has written and spoken widely on topics such as standards-based reform, public-private partnerships, and the transition from high school to adulthood. M.A., Brandeis University
	Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Professor of Education Harvard Graduate School of Education
	Hirokazu Yoshikawa is Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is a developmental and community psychologist. His current NSF-funded work examines how public policies, parental employment, and transnational contexts influence children’s development in Chinese, Mexican, Dominican, and African American families. This work combines longitudinal survey, observational, and ethnographic methods. He has also begun a project on how economic reforms affect family life and child development in China. He has conducted extensive research on the effects on children of public policies related to welfare, employment, and early childhood intervention. He is currently working on large-scale early childhood intervention projects in collaboration with the Boston Public Schools and the Chilean Ministry of Education. His book on the effects of low-wage work on children (Making it Work: Low-Wage Employment, Family Life, and Child Development, with Thomas S. Weisner and Edward Lowe) was published in 2006 by the Russell Sage Foundation. He has been awarded two early career awards, one in developmental psychology and one in psychology relevant to social issues, from the American Psychological Association, a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and an ethnic minority mentorship award from Division 27 (Society for Community Research and Action) of the American Psychological Association.