Our Team

Christopher Lubienski

Director; Professor of Education Policy, IU School of Education

Christopher Lubienski is a Professor of education policy at Indiana University, and Director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy. He is also a fellow with the National Education Policy Center, Guest Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Global Studies of Educational Leadership and Collaboration at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and Adjunct Professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia, where he also served as Sir Walter Murdoch Visiting Professor. He has been co-leader of the Scholar Strategy Network’s K-12 Working Group. His research focuses on education policy, reform, and the political economy of education, with a particular concern for issues of equity, access, and evidence use in policymaking.

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David Rutkowski

Associate Director; Professor of Education Policy, IU School of Education

David Rutkowski is a Professor in Educational Inquiry at Indiana University. Prior to IU he was a Professor of Education at the Center for Educational Measurement (CEMO) at the University of Oslo, Norway. He also worked as a researcher for the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in Hamburg Germany. He earned a PhD in educational policy with a research specialization in evaluation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

His research is focused in the area of educational policy and educational assessment with specific emphasis on international large-scale assessment, and particularly how large-scale assessments are used within policy debates, the impact of background questionnaire quality on achievement results, and achievement estimation in heterogeneous populations. He has collaborated with or consulted for national and international organizations including the US State Department, USAID, UNESCO, the IEA and the OECD. He has worked on and lead evaluations and projects in over 30 countries, and is currently the editor of the IEA policy brief series, and the journal Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

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Paul Faulkner

Graduate Staff

Paul Faulkner is a Ph.D. student at Indiana University Bloomington, majoring in History, Philosophy, and Policy in Education with a specialization in Education Policy Studies and a minor in Music Education. A former K-12 performing arts educator, his research interests center on equity and access in arts and music education, as well as the sociohistorical development of the American high school marching band.

Charlotte Agger

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Charlotte Agger, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Counseling & Educational Psychology department with an appointment in Human Development. Her research interests include psychological and contextual influences related to the schooling experiences of historically marginalized adolescents and emerging adults, particularly rural, Black, and LGBTQ+ students. She is interested in how family and school contexts, especially STEM-related contexts, interact with students' motivation, feelings of belonging, performance, and persistence across high school and into college.

Alexander Cuenca

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Alexander Cuenca, Ph.D. is associate professor of curriculum and instruction and coordinator for the Middle/Secondary Social Studies Education program at Indiana University. His research focuses on social studies teacher education, the pedagogy of teacher education, and teacher education policy. Dr. Cuenca’s expertise has been featured in stories about teaching and teacher education in media outlets such as St. Louis Public Radio, Indiana Public Media, Associated Press, Scripps National Television Network, St. Louis Dispatch, and Indianapolis Star.

Janet R. Decker

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Janet R. Decker, J.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at Indiana University’s School of Education. She teaches school law courses to undergraduate, master's, doctoral, and law students. Dr. Decker researches legal and policy issues in special education, as well as the legal literacy of educators and administrators.

Chad Lochmiller

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Chad Lochmiller, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies. His research focuses on policy and leadership issues, particularly those related to school and district improvement, resource allocation and management, and leadership preparation. He is a member of the National Faculty for Improvement Science with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Lochmiller has extensive experience with contract-based (applied) research and program evaluation, having worked as a Research Scientist for Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia at CNA (2013-2015). His experience includes working with federal and state education agencies, universities, school districts, non-profits, and philanthropies.

Sylvia Martinez

Associate Professor, IU School of Education

Sylvia Martinez, Ph.D., is an associate professor jointly appointed in Education Leadership and Policy Studies and in the Latino Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the director of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity on Society. Her research focuses on Latino/a education, Latino/a ethnic identity development, and sociology of education issues more generally. Her past work examined whether Latino youth were academically challenged in their high school courses and whether students viewed these challenges as positive or negative. She also examines where and how Latino/a students get information about the college application process and how Latino ethnic identity among Latino/a undergraduates impacts participation at the Latino cultural center on campus.

Vanessa Miller

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Vanessa Miller, J.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at Indiana University’s School of Education, where she specializes in education law. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work focuses on race and the law, school and university police, school crime and safety, prison education, and the role of the courts in education law and policy. She is particularly interested in the experiences of Latina students impacted by the school-prison nexus and the broader criminal legal system. Dr. Miller was the inaugural Postdoctoral Associate at the Race and Crime Center for Justice at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and worked at an education law firm in California.

Michele Moore

Clinical Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Dr. Michele Moore has a wide variety of experiences including over 23 years working with school districts. She has been a superintendent of Indiana School Districts for over 5 years as well as two years as Executive Director and CFO at Central Indiana Educational Service Center. She also prepared budgets, conducted superintendent and board training and consulted in the area of school finance. She has been a licensed CPA since 1995, holding stints as a field examiner with the Indiana State Board of Accounts and in private practice consulting with nonprofits and individuals. Dr. Moore’s expertise is in financial management for schools, understanding and working in declining enrollment, and reviews of ADM and school transfers for Indiana School Districts.

Frank Perrone

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Frank Perrone, PhD, is an assistant professor of educational leadership in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University. His primary research interests include principal preparation and labor markets, education policy, and the principal’s role in teacher career trajectories.

Amy Pickard

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Amy Pickard is an assistant professor in Indiana University's Adult Education program and a qualitative researcher whose interests center on policy, equity, and instruction in adult literacy/adult basic education. Her years as an adult literacy teacher in a range of community settings led to her current research interests in the impact of federal and state policy on everyday practice. She is particularly interested in how marginalized adults define their own learning needs and how to support public policy and publicly-funded programs in meeting these needs.

Jennifer Rippner

Lecturer, IU School of Education

Jennifer Rippner, Ph.D., J.D., is a lecturer in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the IU School of Education. She has spent most of her career leading and studying state education policy, including serving as a Governor's education advisor and as a Senior Legal and Policy advisor at a national law firm. Her research centers on the intersection of K-12 and higher education law, governance, and policy.

Maurice Shirley

Assistant Professor, IU School of Education

Maurice Shirley, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at Indiana University, Education Leadership and Policy studies. Using quantitative methods, he researches potential barriers hindering college access and completion for historically underrepresented student populations.

Yusuf Canbolat

Ph.D. student, IU School of Education

Yusuf Canbolat is a Ph.D. candidate in education policy studies at Indiana University School of Education, with a doctoral minor in econometrics at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. His research focuses on educational equity, school choice, quantitative methods, and large-scale student assessments. He received Strategic Data Project Fellowship from the Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research. He also received a summer fellowship from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) doctoral internship from the American Institute for Research.

Moaaz Hamid

Ph.D. student, IU School of Education

Moaaz Hamid is a Ph.D. student in History, Philosophy, and Policy in Education, specializing in Education Policy Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests, stemming from his work in education development sector in Pakistan, are global education policy, non-state actors in education, and knowledge utilization in education policy sphere.

Jina Kim

Ph.D. Student, IU School of Education

Jina Kim is a Ph.D. student in Education Policy Studies with a major concentration in education law, and a minor concentration in Geography. Her research interests center around equity in the education policy process, legislative effects on educational equity, and geospatial analysis of educational opportunity. Prior to pursuing her degree at Indiana University Bloomington, she worked at the National Assembly Research Service in South Korea as a research assistant.