VUE 19: Author Biographies

Voices in Urban Education

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Learning Environments
VUE Number 19, Spring 2008

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Author Biographies

Carol Ascher

Carol Ascher is a principal associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. She directs a cluster of multiyear projects aimed at understanding the charter school movement, including studies that follow the charter school start-up and conversion process; compare the effects of charter status in New York City on autonomy, finance, accountability, and school supports; examine the effects of charter reform on the authorizers and other state and local agencies; and analyze the relationships charter schools are forming with educational management organizations and other private organizations that support them. She also leads a national study investigating the opportunity to learn in urban charter schools. Previously, Carol's two-year analysis for the New York State Department of Education's process for identifying and improving its lowest-performing schools resulted in Schools on Notice and Schools in Context. Carol holds a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. Her research has focused on educational equity, including desegregation, school finance, and improving schools serving low-income children of color. She is co-author of Public Schools and Privatization and author of the novel The Flood, which depicts the beginning of Brown v. Board of Education.

> VUE 19 Article: Beating the Odds

John M. Beam

John M. Beam is executive director of the National Center for Schools and Communities at Fordham University, a policy advocacy institute jointly sponsored by the Graduate Schools of Education and Social Service. In the past seven years, the NCSC has provided data and policy analysis to parent-led school reform efforts in Albuquerque, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, and St. Louis. Much of the NCSC's work has focused on equity studies assisting community groups in documenting the race and class bias in the distribution of educational resources available to public school students. Beam brings over 30 years of working for social change as a policy analyst, project manager, and organizer to his responsibilities as NCSC Executive Director (2000-present). He has a Bachelor's in Political Science from Northwestern University and a Master's in Urban Management and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research.

> VUE 19 Article: Life without Lockdown: Do Peaceful Schools Require High-Profile Policing?

Annalise Gehling

Annalise Gehling is an educational planner with Fielding Nair International, which served as the planner and design consultant for the High School for the Recording Arts in Minneapolis. Annalise Gehling is a Melbourne-based teacher, geographer and designer and serves as FNI’s Associate Educational Planner. In her first year in this role, Annalise has researched and authored a detailed critique of the Cayman Islands’ school environments, acted as chief planner for a school library refurbishment, written a book introduction for the School Libraries Association of Victoria, and played a key role in FNI’s School Planning contracts in Victoria, Tasmania, New Zealand and the Cayman Islands. Annalise earned a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Adelaide, Australia, in 2002. Her excellent results in majors of Geography, and Media and Communication showcased her talents as a spatial and linguistic thinker. After working as a graduate in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Annalise turned to her passion for education and completed a Bachelor of Teaching (Primary and Secondary) at Deakin University in November 2006.

> VUE 19 Article: Democratic School Architecture: The Community Center Model

Judith Johnson

Judith Johnson is superintendent of the Peekskill (New York) City School District and is the 2008 New York State School Superintendent of the Year. Judith Johnson was appointed superintendent of schools for the Peekskill City School District on September 1, 2001, becoming the first woman and African-American to serve as the City's school superintendent. Previously, Ms. Johnson served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education and later, Acting Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education under president Bill Clinton, where she aided in the development of national policy addressing the educational needs of America's 51 million students. Ms. Johnson is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the American Association of School Administrators, the national organization of professional school district leaders. She also serves as co-chair of the New York Council's Curriculum and Instruction Committee and previously served as a member of the Council's Executive Committee.

> VUE 19 Article: The View from Central Office: A Superintendent Looks at Learning Environments

Chase Madar

Chase Madar is a staff attorney at Make the Road New York, a community organizing and legal services nonprofit with offices in Bushwick (Brooklyn), Corona (Queens) and Port Richmond (Staten Island). He has written for the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, and the London Times Literary Supplement.

> VUE 19 Article: Life without Lockdown: Do Peaceful Schools Require High-Profile Policing?

Cindy Maguire

Cindy Maguire is a research associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Cindy Maguire co-directs a three-year project on arts education in the New York City Schools at the middle and high school levels. The research is being conducted in collaboration with New Visions, Center for Arts Education, and the New York City Department of Education, with the aim of building a strong partnership among these entities. She also teaches part-time in the MA Art Education Program at New York University and has her own practice as an artist in mixed media and printmaking. Previously, she served as a visual arts educator in Los Angeles schools for nine years, including art and arts advocacy at the district and state levels. She is working towards a PhD in Art Education from New York University, and holds an MA in Art Education from California State University, Long Beach, and a BA in Art Education/3-D Studio Art from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Her research interests are K-12 and post-secondary art education, community engagement through the arts, social justice education, urban education, and small schools reform. She is also involved in research and projects pertaining to international peace education through the arts.

> VUE 19 Article: Beating the Odds

Prakash Nair

Prakash Nair is president of Fielding Nair International,one of the world’s leading change agents in school design, which served as the planner and design consultant for the High School for the Recording Arts in Minneapolis. He is also the Managing Editor of DesignShare.com which attracts over one million visitors each year. He is the recipient of several international awards including the prestigious CEFPI MacConnell Award, the top honor worldwide for school design. Prakash has written extensively in leading international journals about school design and educational technology and their connection to established educational research. He is also the author of two guidebooks on school planning including the landmark 2005 publication, The Language of School Design which he co-authored with his partner Randall Fielding.

> VUE 19 Article: Democratic School Architecture: The Community Center Model

Kathleen Nolan

Kathleen Nolan is an Assistant Professor of Education at Mercy College in New York. She received her doctorate in 2007 from the Urban Education Program (Policy) at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her research interests include school discipline policy and crime control policies aimed at urban youth, the political economic context of urban schooling, and the impact of current reforms on educational outcomes for English language learners. She is currently conducting follow up research on the educational and career trajectories of high school students she met in 2004. Before entering her doctoral program, Nolan was a public high school ESL teacher in the South Bronx.

> VUE 19 Article: The Impact of Order-Maintenance Policing on an Urban School Environment: An Ethnographic Portrait

Deinya Phenix

Deinya Phenix is a senior data analyst and data manager at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Deinya helps community-based collaborative and research organizations obtain and analyze public education data. She manages a growing library of public school and district data and provides technical assistance to the Community Involvement Program and to other staff in statistical applications and research design. She conducts and collaborates on research projects that study the social geography of educational opportunity, teacher compensation and learning communities, New York State district administrators appointed to serve as liaisons for homeless students, discipline and policing in New York City schools, and schools that beat the demographic odds. Prior to joining CIP, Deinya worked as a research programmer at the New York City Criminal Justice Agency and as a research associate at the Institute for Social Research. Deinya's multifaceted perspective on urban education stems from her social science background. She holds a master's degree in sociology from the University of New Mexico and is a doctoral candidate in sociology at New York University.

> VUE 19 Article: Life without Lockdown: Do Peaceful Schools Require High-Profile Policing?

Robert Rothman

Robert Rothman is responsible for writing Institute publications and editing the Institute's quarterly journal Voices in Urban Education, a "roundtable-in-print" designed to air diverse viewpoints and share new knowledge on vital issues in urban education. He has written for numerous education publications and organizations and was a reporter and editor for Education Week. He was also a senior project associate for Achieve, a study director for the National Research Council, and the director of special projects for the National Center on Education and the Economy. Bob holds a BA in political science from Yale University. He is the author of Measuring Up: Standards, Assessment and School Reform and numerous book chapters and articles on testing and education reform.

> VUE 19 Article: Learning in Context: The Importance of Learning Environments



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