Research Advisory Committee

Katherine Blasik, Ph.D.

Associate Superintendent, Broward County Public Schools

Research Services, School Boundaries, School Improvement, Student Assessment

Ft. Lauderdale, FL

Dr. Blasik has extensive experience in education through her work in urban, suburban and rural settings in Pennsylvania, North Dakota, West Virginia, Ohio, and Florida, ranging from teaching at the elementary, middle, high, and university levels to administration at the district and county offices.  She has contributed to research and policy at the national level through appointment to the Council of Chief State School Offices Assessment Task Force, appointment to the Council of the Great City Schools’ Blue Ribbon Commission on Urban School Achievement, selection as a Fellow of the National Center for Educational Statistics, appointment to the Education Research Services (ERS) Spectrum Editorial Advisory Board, and participation on the South Florida Annenberg Evaluation Advisory Board. She has contributed at the state level through appointment to the Florida and Islands Regional Comprehensive Center Advisory Board, the Florida Sterling (Balridge) Board of Directors, and Florida Department of Education committees on accountability, standard setting, and consultant selection.  Dr. Blasik has also published extensively on longitudinal studies and has presented nationally to varied audiences on issues such as the role of a national assessment in framing urban education. Dr. Blasik earned a Ph.D. with a focus on Economic Policy and Administration from the University of Miami, Florida.

Clifford Janey, Ph.D.

Superintendent, District of Columbia Public Schools

Washington, DC

Prior to his selection as School Superintendent for the nation's capital, Dr. Janey served as Vice President for Education at Scholastic, Inc. From 1995 to 2002, Dr. Janey served as Superintendent of Schools in Rochester, New York, an urban school system of 55,000 students. As superintendent, he increased reading and mathematics performance on state assessments and reduced the achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white counterparts. Before serving as Superintendent of Schools in Rochester, Dr. Janey held a number of important positions in the Boston (MA) Public Schools from 1973 to 1995. These included Chief Academic Officer, East Zone Superintendent (K-8), Community District Superintendent (K-12), Principal of Theodore Roosevelt Middle School, and Reading Teacher at the George Bancroft School. He also served as a principal in the Salem (MA) Public Schools and as Director of Black Studies at Northeastern University. He has a doctorate in Educational Policy Planning and Administration from Boston University, a master's degree in Reading and Elementary Education, and a bachelor's degree in Sociology, both from Northeastern University.

Carol Johnson, Ph.D.

Superintendent, Memphis City Schools

Memphis, TN

Before going to Memphis, Johnson served as superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools from 1997 to 2003. There she led the effort to establish district content standards aligned with "No Child Left Behind," and she established programs that improved reading, math, and writing performance among all students. Johnson began her career as a teacher in the Washington, D.C., Schools in 1969. She also served as program coordinator for a U.S. Department of Education career opportunities program and director of the Minnesota State Facilitator Project. She received her bachelor's degree in elementary education from Fisk University in Nashville and earned a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

Kent McGuire, Ph.D.

Dean, College of Education

Temple University

Philadelphia, PA

C. Kent McGuire is the dean of the College of Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Immediately prior to his appointment in July 2003, Dr. McGuire served as senior vice president of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, where his responsibilities included leadership of the education, children and youth division. From 1998 to 2001, Dr. McGuire served in the Clinton administration as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, where he was the senior officer for the department’s research and development agency. As education program officer for The Pew Charitable Trusts from 1995 to 1998, he managed Pew’s K-12 grants portfolio. From 1991 to 1995, Dr. McGuire served as education program director for the Eli Lilly Endowment. Dr. McGuire's current research interests focus on the areas of education administration, and policy and organizational change. He has been involved in a number of evaluation research initiatives on comprehensive school reform and education finance and school improvement, and written and coauthored various policy reports, monographs, book chapters, articles, and papers in professional journals. Dr. McGuire received his doctorate in public administration from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1991.

Richard Murnane, Ph.D.

Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society

Harvard University Graduate School of Education

Cambridge, MA

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. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. Murnane’s publications include Who Will Teach? Policies that Matter, with Judith Singer and John Willett, Teaching the New Basic Skills, coauthored by MIT professor Frank Levy, and The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market, with Frank Levy. 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 he 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.

Andrew Porter, Ph.D.

Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, TN

Andrew Porter is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy and director of the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt University. He has published widely on education policy, student assessment, education indicators, and research on teaching. His current work focuses on curriculum policies and their effects on opportunity to learn, and student achievement. Currently, he has research support from the National Science Foundation (co-director, System-Wide Change for All Learners and Educators; principal investigator, Longitudinal Design to Measure Effects of Math-Science Partnership Professional Development in Improving the Quality of Instruction and Science Education); and the Wallace Foundation (principal investigator, Develop and Test Education Leadership Performance Assessment). He is an elected member and vice president of the National Academy of Education, lifetime national associate of the National Academies, and past-president of the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Porter received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin in 1967.

Melissa Roderick, Ph.D.

Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor

School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago

Melissa Roderick is the Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. She is an expert in urban minority adolescent development and urban school reform. At CCSR, Professor Roderick has conducted research on student performance in the transition to high school and is currently leading CCSR's multi-year evaluation of Chicago's efforts to end social promotion. This work includes an intensive investigation of the impact of Chicago's Summer Bridge program, analysis of teachers' response to the policy, and quantitative and qualitative analysis of the impact of retention on students' progress and achievement. Her work brings together rich longitudinal investigation of student experiences with large-scale statistical analyses of student and school performance. Professor Roderick is the lead author on several CCSR reports (see list below). During the 2001-2002 school year, Professor Roderick served as the Director of the Department of Planning and Development at the Chicago Public Schools, assisting the new school administration in building a new planning and analytic capacity. Professor Roderick received a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.