Biographical Summaries of Contributors
ROBERT BERNE is vice president for academic development at New York University, where he has been a faculty member since 1976. His primary research interests involve educational policy research issues, such as school finance equity and school-level budgeting. In addition to numerous published articles, he is the co-author (with Leanna Stiefel) of The Measurement of Equity in School Finance and the co-editor (with Lawrence Picus) of Outcome Equity in Education. Dr. Berne chaired the Outcome Equity Study Group for the New York State Commissioner of Education, served as executive director of the New York State Temporary Commission on New York City School Governance from 1989 to 1991, and was the director of policy research for New York State's Temporary Commission on the Distribution of School Aid in 1988. Currently, he is a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Education Finance. He received an M.B.A. in finance and a Ph.D. in business and public administration from Cornell University.
MELISSA C. CARR received her master's degree in public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, Princeton University. Formerly director of programs in the former Soviet Union for Project Harmony, she has worked with government ministries, partner schools, and nongovernmental organizations to develop international educational and cultural programs. Her research interests include educational equity and adequacy across gender, race, income, and geographic regions; the role and nature of nongovernmental organizations in emerging democracies; and the role of educational and curricular reforms
in societies in transition. She has a B.A. in political science from Amherst College.
ROSEMARY CHALK (co-editor) is senior program officer with the Committee on Education Finance. She has served as a study director for several projects within the National Research Council since 1986, including studies on family violence, child abuse and neglect, and research ethics. Prior to that time she was a consultant for science and society research projects in Cambridge, MA. She was the program head of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 1976-86. Ms. Chalk has a B.A. in foreign affairs from the University of Cincinnati.
WILLIAM D. DUNCOMBE is associate professor of public administration at The Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He is also a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research. He has written numerous articles related to school finance issues, and his fields of specialization include the analysis of school costs, consolidation, and efficiency, and the distribution of state school aid. He has also conducted research in public budgeting and finance of state and local governments. He has an M.P.A. and Ph.D. in public administration from Syracuse University.
WILLIAM N. EVANS is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a senior research associate at the Project HOPE Center for Health Affairs. Professor Evans has spent the past 19 years in the Atlantic Coast Conference, joining the Maryland faculty in 1987. His principal research interest is in applied microeconomics and he has worked on topics in public finance, labor economics, industrial organization, and health economics. His current research centers on the impact of education finance reform, the effects of family structure on mothers and their children, and the economic control of tobacco and alcohol. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Duke University.
SUSAN H. FUHRMAN is professor of education and dean of the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. She is also chair of the management committee of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. Her research interests are in education policy finance, including state policy design, accountability, deregulation, and intergovernmental regulation. She is author of numerous papers on education policy, the editor of Designing Coherent Education Policy: Improving the System and The Governance of Curriculum, and co-editor (with Jennifer A. O'Day) of Rewards and Reform, Creating Educational Incentives that Work. She has served on national and state task forces and commissions, including the U.S. Department of Education's Independent Review Panel for Title I, the National Research Council's Committee on a National
Educational Support System for Teachers and Schools, the Standards Task Force of the National Council of Education Standards and Testing, and the New Jersey Task Force on Educational Assessment and Monitoring. Dr. Fuhrman is currently a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Education Finance. She holds a Ph.D. in political science and education from Columbia University.
MARGARET E. GOERTZ is professor of education and co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, she was executive director of the Education Policy Research Division of the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Technical Panel on Special Education, and a former member of the National Research Council's Committee on Goals 2000 and the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities. Her research activities include studies of standards-based reform in education and allocation of school-level resources. She has an M.P.A. and Ph.D. in social science from The Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
JAMES W. GUTHRIE is professor of education and public policy at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Prior to his Vanderbilt appointment, he was co-director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and professor of education at the University of California at Berkeley. He has worked for the California and New York State Education Departments, served as an education specialist for the United States Senate, and was a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He has been honored as an Alfred North Whitehead postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, visiting fellow at the department of educational studies of Oxford University, and in 1990 was named as the American Education Research Association's first senior fellow. Dr. Guthrie is president of a private management consulting corporation, Management Analysis and Planning Inc., which specializes in education finance and litigation support. He is a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Education Finance. He has a Ph.D. in education policy from Stanford University.
JANET S. HANSEN (co-editor) is the study director for the Committee on Education Finance. As a senior program officer at the National Research Council, she has managed several projects related to education and training, international comparative studies in education, and civilian aviation careers. Prior to joining the NRC staff, she was director for policy analysis at the College Board. She wrote and lectured widely on issues relating to higher education finance, federal and state student assistance programs, and how families pay for college. She also served as director for continuing education and associate provost at the Claremont College and as assistant dean of the College at Princeton University. She graduated
from the University of North Carolina and received a Ph.D. degree in public and international affairs from Princeton.
HELEN F. LADD (co-editor) is professor of public policy studies and economics at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University and co-chairs the National Research Council Committee on Education Finance. Her research expertise involves state and local public finance, and she has published extensively in the areas of education finance, property taxation, state economic development, and the fiscal problems of U.S. cities. Among her numerous publications, she is the editor of Holding Schools Accountable: Performance-Based Reform in Education and the co-author (with John Yinger) of America's Ailing Cities: Fiscal Health and the Design of Urban Policy. She has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
PAUL A. MINORINI is a director of Boys Hope Girls Hope, a national residential and college preparatory program for at-risk, yet academically capable, youth, headquartered in Bridgeton, Missouri. Previously, he was a senior program officer at the National Research Council for the Committee on Education Finance. Prior to joining the NRC, Mr. Minorini was an attorney at Hogan & Hartson in Washington, DC, where he represented school districts in efforts to obtain greater education funding equity and program adequacy through policy reform and litigation. He has published several articles related to school finance equity and adequacy legal cases. Mr. Minorini has a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
SHEILA E. MURRAY is a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. She is on leave from the University of Kentucky where she is an assistant professor at the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration and the Department of Economics. Her fields of specialization include public finance, econometrics, and the economics of education. Her current research interests are in education finance reform and policy, the distribution of education resources, and the centralization of public school finance. She has an M.A. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland at College Park.
GARY NATRIELLO is professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also a senior research scientist at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education and editor of the Teachers College Record. His current research interests include the impact of evaluation processes on students and the needs of at-risk students. He has worked with the at-risk students
projects at The Johns Hopkins University National Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Youth. Among his numerous publications, he is co-author of Schooling Disadvantaged Children: Racing Against Catastrophe (with Edward McDill and Aaron Pallas) and From Cashbox to Classroom: The Impact of Quality Education in New Jersey (with William Firestone and Margaret Goertz). Dr. Natriello is a member of the Committee on Education Finance of the National Research Council. He has a Ph.D. in the sociology of education from Stanford University.
RICHARD ROTHSTEIN is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute, an adjunct professor of public policy at Occidental College, and a contributing editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of numerous publications in education finance including: The Way We Were? and Where's the Money Gone? Changes in the Level and Composition of Education Spending, 1967-91 (and its update Where's the Money Going?). He also co-edited (with Edith Rasell) School Choice: Examining the Evidence. Mr. Rothstein was formerly a program analyst for the Los Angles School Board.
ROBERT M. SCHWAB is professor and director of graduate studies at the Department of Economics, University of Maryland, College Park. His fields of specialization are in public and urban economics. He has published numerous articles on education finance, and his most recent research focuses on education finance reform, the distribution of education resources, and education productivity, with a particular emphasis on the relative efficiency of public and private schools. Dr. Schwab is a member of the Committee on Education Finance of the National Research Council. He has a Ph.D. in economics from The Johns Hopkins University.
LEANNA STIEFEL is professor of economics at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University where she is director of the public and nonprofit program for M.P.A. students. Her published work includes many articles on school finance equity and school finance reform. Her current research activities include studies of the efficiency and equity of school-level resource allocation and school-based financing. She is author of Statistical Analysis for Public and Nonprofit Managers and co-author (with Robert Berne) of The Measurement of Equity in School Finance. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
STEPHEN D. SUGARMAN is Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley where he is also director of the Family Law Program of the Earl Warren Legal Institute. Professor Sugarman is a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Education Finance. His published scholarship in the field of educational policy and the law covers topics
such as school finance reform, school choice, and the legal rights of public school children. Among his many publications, he is co-author (with John Coons and William Clune) of Private Wealth and Public Education and (with John Coons) of Education by Choice and of Scholarships for Children. He has participated in school finance litigation in several states and, on behalf of children from low-wealth school districts, argued the case of Serrano v. Priest before the California Supreme Court. He has a J.D. from the Northwestern University School of Law.
JOHN M. YINGER is professor of economic and public administration at The Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He is also associate director for the Metropolitan Studies Program at the Center for Policy Research. Previously, he was associate professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He has published numerous articles in his fields of expertise, which include state and local public finance, discrimination in housing, and urban economics. He is co-author (with Helen Ladd) of America's Ailing Cities: Fiscal Health and the Design of Urban Policy. In 1995, Dr. Yinger was awarded the Gustavus Meyers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America for his book Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.