Leading With Data

Ellen B. Goldring is professor of education policy and leadership at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, where she won the Alexander Heard Distinguished Professor award. Her areas of expertise and research focus on improving schools, with particular attention to educational leadership and access and equity in schools of choice. She is the immediate past coeditor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She serves on numerous editorial boards, technical panels, and policy forums, and is the coauthor of three books, including Principals of Dynamic Schools (Corwin Press), as well as hundreds of book chapters and articles. Goldring is currently working on a project funded by the Wallace Foundation to develop and field-test an education leadership assessment system and establish its psychometric properties. She is also conducting experiments to study professional development and performance feedback for school leaders. She is an investigator at the National Center on School Choice and the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt. Goldring received her PhD from the University of Chicago. Mark Berends is the Hackett Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a professor of sociology and directs the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO). He has written and published extensively on educational reform, school choice, the effects of family and school changes on student achievement trends and gaps, and the effects of schools and classrooms on student outcomes. His research focuses on how school organization and classroom instruction are related to student development, with special attention to underserved students and school reforms aimed at reducing educational inequalities. Within this agenda, he has applied a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods to understanding the effects of school reforms on students, teachers, and schools.