Stephen Ponisciak was a 2010 First Place winner in the area of Oustanding Planning, Policy, or Management Research from the American Educational Research Association Division H (Research, Evaluation, and Assessment in Schools)

Rob Meyer has been honored with a 2010 Academic Staff Excellence Award in recognition of excellence in research by an independent investigator. Winners were recognized by the Academic Staff Assembly on April 12 and honored at a reception with University of Wisconsin Chancellor Biddy Martin.

Amy McIntosh, New York City Department of Education Chief Talant Officer, discusses VARC’s contribution to the district’s teacher data initiative (New York City Department of Education website).

More news...

• ABOUT VARC
• METHODOLOGY
• PROJECTS
• STAFF
• PARTNERS
• TUTORIALS
• CONTACT

LEADERSHIP

Robert Meyer
rhmeyer@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-5663
Office: 769 Ed Sciences
Website

Robert Meyer, Reserach Professor and Senior Scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), is the Director of the Value-Added Research Center (VARC). Meyer is known for his research on value-added modeling and evaluation methods and is currently working on projects funded by the Institute of Educational Sciences (U.S. Department of Education), the Joyce Foundation, the Milwaukee Public Schools, the National Science Foundation, and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Over the last decade and a half, Meyer has worked closely with districts and states to develop and apply innovative statistical methods. He has conducted major statistical evaluations of programs and policies such as SAGE (the Wisconsin class-size initiative), systemic reform in Texas, integrated versus traditional mathematics, and professional development and other math and science reforms in Cleveland and Riverside, California. Meyer has also worked with numerous districts to develop and implement value-added indicator and accountability systems, including the school report card implemented in the Milwaukee Public Schools in 2002.

Chris Thorn
cathorn@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-2709
Office: 370G Ed Sciences
Website

Chris Thorn is an Associate Scientist and Associate Director of the Value-Added Research Center.  He leads the VARC contribution to the Center for Educator Compensation Reform (CECR).  Along with Rob Meyer, Chris leads VARC in its mission to promote the development, application, and dissemination of value-added research methods to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of schools, teachers, programs, and policies on an ongoing basis.  His work focuses on the links between operational information systems, value-added analysis results, and decision support systems at the state-, district-, and school-levels.  Chris is also the director of Technical Services at WCER, where he manage the unit that provides research support, day-to-day computer and network services, as well as a team of graphic artists, web developers, programmers, and videographers who provide custom support services.

STAFF

Sarah Archibald
sarchiba@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-9893
Office: 653B Ed Sciences

Sarah Archibald is a researcher at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the past ten years, Sarah has been conducting research in the areas of resource reallocation, school reform, school-based budgeting, professional development and school finance adequacy. She helped develop two frameworks for collecting micro-level data, both published in the Journal of Education Finance: a school-level expenditure structure, and a framework for capturing professional development costs at the district and school-level. Sarah is also the coauthor, with Allan Odden, of a book published in 2000, Reallocating Resources: How to Boost Student Achievement without Asking for More, and an update to this book is forthcoming from Corwin Press. 

In May 2007, she received a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for which her dissertation used multilevel modeling to analyze the use of standards-based teacher evaluations to identify high-quality teachers. Sarah holds an M.P.A. from the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs, and continues to be interested in the intersection of research and policy. Her B.A. is also from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in political science.

Jason Beach
jbeach@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-7283
Office: 871C Educational Sciences

Jason Beach is an analyst in the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Jason focuses on the evaluation of Supplemental Educational Services, particularly for the cities of Dallas, Austin, and Chicago.  His previous work involved implementing mixed-effects models for evaluating effectiveness of programs in experimental and observational settings.  These evaluation analyses included programs for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Iraqi Ministry of Defence, and Iraqi Ministry of Oil.  Jason earned an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY.

Daniel Bolt
dmbolt@wisc.edu | Phone: 608-262-4938
Office: 1082A Educational Sciences

Daniel Bolt is a professor in the quantitative methods area of the department of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He specializes in the area of psychometrics, and in particular on methodological issues related to measurement.  His primary area of research is in item response theory (IRT), including issues related to multidimensionality, equating, and differential item functioning.  Applications include test data from both standardized tests as well as self-report measures.  A recent focus of interest is on the use of IRT to study and accommodate response styles in self-report data.

Dan’s methodological work has been published in various outlets, including the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, the Journal of Educational Measurement, Psychometrika, and Applied Psychological Measurement.  Dan also frequently consults with faculty and researchers on campus on issues related to measurement and applications of statistical methods.  He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999, and was recognized by the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) with the Jason Millman Promising Scholar Award in 2003.

Patricia Burch
pburch@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-1717 | Office: 257 Education
Website | Website

Patricia Burch received her doctoral degree in 2000 from Stanford University in Social Sciences and Education Policy.  Her research explores the policy process at the Federal, state, school district, school and classroom levels, focusing on intergovernmental relations and connections between policy practice and research.  She examines educational policy in the context of wider political and cultural processes, particularly as they unfold in urban contexts and in high poverty settings.  She also is interested in developing conceptual models of policy research that connect macro level analyses with micro investigations of school and classroom practice.

Eric Camburn
ecamburn@education.wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-3697
Office: 1186C Ed Sciences
Website

Eric Camburn has a PhD from the University of Chicago Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis (MESA) program. His research focuses on urban public schools and their improvement. His early work documented the difficulty poor and minority students in urban schools have in negotiating the transitions from elementary school to high school and from high school to postsecondary education. His current research centers around understanding efforts to improve instruction in urban schools; including programmatic efforts to improve instruction; the organizational factors that support such improvement efforts; and the impact such change efforts have on leadership practice, instruction, and student achievement. In support of his research on instructional improvement in urban settings, Camburn’s current work also focuses on the measurement of instruction and leadership practice. Much of Camburn’s research involves the use of multi-level statistical models, but he has also conducted a number of mixed-method investigations. Camburn and his co-authors won the William J. Davis Memorial Award for the most outstanding article in the journal Educational Administration Quarterly in 2000.

Bradley Carl
brcarl@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-3040
Office: 798 Ed Sciences

Bradley Carl serves as the VARC Embedded Researcher for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).  In this capacity, he splits time between WCER and the MPS Division of Research & Assessment to conduct program evaluations and research involving key MPS initiatives and district improvement efforts.  Examples of completed work conducted to date include evaluations of MPS high schools, charter schools, and summer school programs; a single-gender classroom initiative at an MPS middle school; and the MPS/Milwaukee Recreation Arts Partnership program.  His ongoing work includes evaluations of programs to improve transitions to high school, a postsecondary tracking system for MPS graduates, and an "early warning" system to identify students at high risk of failing to graduate from high school and graduating with low levels of college and workforce readiness.  Dr. Carl holds a B.A. in International Studies and History from Hamline University and a Ph.D. in Sociology-Urban Studies from Michigan State University.  He worked previously for the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C.; the Office of Educational Accountability at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction; and the Center on Education and Work at UW-Madison

Brie Chapa
bchapa@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-1902
Office: 783 Educational Sciences

Brie Chapa is our data manager at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has a B.S. in Secondary Mathematics Education from UW-Madison.  After a few years of teaching in the field, she was hired as a data processor for the SCALE partnership at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER).  Her SCALE work focused on data reporting and addressing issues of data quality.  As VARC data manager, she oversees data acquisition protocols, data transfer, and data protection/security.  In addition she develops new systems within VARC to improve data use, efficiency, and collaboration among staff.

Huiping "Emily" Cheng
hcheng6@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2620
Office: 871B Ed Sciences

Huiping Cheng is an associate researcher in the Value-Added Researcher Center (VARC).  Ms. Cheng actively engages in the design and implementation of statistical analysis to evaluate impact of educational interventions in the partner school districts.  Projects she has worked on include the quantitative research of the SAGE program, the evaluation of Supplemental Educational Services and the Accountability and Performance in Secondary Education project in the Milwaukee Public Schools.  Ms. Cheng earned her Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Virginia in 2005 and joined VARC in July, 2007.

Michael Christian
mchristian2@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-4235
Office: 886 Ed Sciences

Michael Christian has been an assistant scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research since November 2006. He has worked in the Value-Added Research Center since joining WCER. His work at WCER has focused on developing and estimating value-added models for Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison and on providing technical assistance for districts and states participating in the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) program. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 2004. Before joining WCER, he worked as a staff economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Penny Clark
plclark@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-9893
Office: 768 Ed Sciences

Penny Clark is the research manager at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  In May 2000, she graduated with degrees in psychology and French from UW-Madison.  She has worked for the University since graduation and joined VARC in September 2008.  Her main tasks with VARC include:  Organizing people and resources; communication with director, assistant director, and staff; project reporting; and project planning.

Emin Dokumaci
edokumaci@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-4292
Office: 884 Ed Sciences

Emin Dokumaci is an assistant scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.  His work is on the identification problem of the effect of schools on students’ achievement levels and their policy implications. In particular, he works on the development of new value-added models. Currently, he and Prof. Robert H. Meyer are working on “A Differential Effects Value-Added Model with Multivariate Shrinkage,” and “Mean and Variance Value-Added Indicators with Multilevel Shrinkage: Application to a Multi-District Statewide Value-Added System.” He works on VARC projects where his expertise in needed. Some of the VARC projects which he is part of are (i) Value Added and Growth Model Demonstration Project, (ii) Milwaukee Classroom Value-Added Initiative, and lately, (iii) An Integrated Qualitative and Quantitative Evaluation of the SAGE Program. In August 2007, Dokumaci received his PhD in Economics from Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also served as a teaching assistant for graduate econometrics and graduate microeconomics courses. Prior to joining WCER as an assistant scientist, he worked as a project assistant for research projects on value-added models while pursuing his doctoral studies. His research interests are broad, and as such he has working papers on Economics of Education, Economic Theory, and Applied Theory. He has published in Games and Economic Behavior.

M. Regina Figueiredo-Brown
figueiredobr@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-4295
Office: 575K Ed Sciences

Regina is a project assistant working with the Value Added Research Project.  She is a graduate student in Educational Policy Studies.  Prior to returning to graduate school, Regina worked in various capacities in public, private and charter schools including teacher, counselor and principal.  Her interests lie in K-12 online education, privatization and school choice.  She has a BA and MEd from The Ohio State University.

Mary Fish
mjfish@wisc.edu | Phone:  (608) 263-4238
871 Educational Sciences

Mary Fish is the administrative assistant for the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She joined the VARC project on March 1, 2010.  Some of her duties include providing support for the director, assistant director and other staff; making travel arrangements; processing expense reports; processing payments to individuals and schools; helping to arrange various meetings; and working with others to update the VARC website.

Nandita Gawade
gawade@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-3386
Office: 871A Ed Sciences

Nandita Gawade is a researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education research.  She has worked in the Value Added Research Center since joining WCER in October 2008.  Her work involves developing econometric methods for the estimation of value-added models. Currently, she is working on the development of classroom value-added models for Milwaukee Public School data.  She received her MA in Economics from Princeton University and is currently writing her doctoral dissertation.

Lisa Geraghty
elgeraghty@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2621
Office: 772 Ed Sciences

Lisa Geraghty serves as an outreach specialist for VARC.  In this capacity, she is part of the design team for professional development work surrounding value-added analysis and part of the development team for a statewide value-added system.  In addition, Ms. Geraghty helps coordinate ongoing evaluation projects.

Ms. Geraghty holds a B.A. in Sociology from Kenyon College, a MPA with a focus on Education Policy from the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a MSEd with a focus on Elementary Education from Northwestern University.  She worked previously as a school administration consultant for the School Management Services team and the Office of Educational Accountability at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, and as an elementary school teacher in the Verona Area School District.

Annalee Good

Annalee Good is a project assistant for VARC, specifically with the study of Supplemental Educational Services (SES) in Milwaukee Public Schools. She works on the fieldwork component of the study, collecting and analyzing qualitative data related to the implementation of SES. She is also a Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies.

M. Elizabeth Graue
graue@education.wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-7435
Office: 785A Ed Sciences
Website

M. Elizabeth Graue is Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and Associate Director of Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Development at WCER.  Her areas of interest include kindergarten policy and practice, class size reduction, home-school relations, and qualitative research methods.  She is currently part of a team of WCER researchers exploring the implementation of a data use reform.

Douglas Harris
dnharris3@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-4295
Office: 575K Ed Sciences
Website

Douglas Harris is an economist and Associate Professor of Educational Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.  His research combines advanced economic analysis with practical understanding of schools to examine policies related to teacher quality, standards, accountability, and data-driven decision-making.  He is author of the forthcoming book about teacher and school value-added measures from Harvard Education Press (February, 2011).  In his current work, he is testing the possibility of estimating value-added for school principals as well as how successful different types of principals are in attracting and retaining high value-added teachers.  In 2008, he chaired (with Adam Gamoran and Stephen Raudenbush) the National Conferences on Value-Added with events in Madison and Washington, DC.  He presents his work regularly to state and federal policymakers and consults with organizations such as the National Council of States Legislators, National School Boards Association, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.  Previously, he was a school board member of the Florida State University School, a K-12 charter school in Tallahassee, FL.  His research papers can be found on his home page (www.education.wisc.edu/eps/faculty/harris.asp) as well as www.teacherqualityresearch.org.

Carolyn Heinrich
cheinrich@lafollette.wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-5443
Office: 204 Observatory Hill Office Building, 1225 Observatory Dr.
Website

Carolyn Heinrich is the director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, professor of public affairs and affiliated professor of economics and a Regina Loughlin Scholar. Her research focuses on social welfare policy, public management, and econometric methods for social program evaluation. She also works directly in her research with governments at all levels, including with the federal government in evaluating workforce development programs, the state of Wisconsin on child-support programs, school districts in the evaluation of supplemental educational services, and other governments such as Brazil and South Africa on their social and human capital development programs.

 

David Heistad
David.Heistad@mpls.k12.mn.us

Dave Heistad is a researcher at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on the large scale teacher effectiveness project funded by the Bush Foundation.  He has worked as a program evaluator and researcher in Minneapolis Public Schools for the past 24 years. He is currently the Executive Director of the Research, Evaluation and Assessment in Minneapolis 80% of the time and works for VARC 20%. 

Dave has published research in the areas of early childhood assessment, the stability of value-added achievement indicators, and teacher effects in reading.  He serves on several federal task forces including the Institute for Education Sciences - Urban Education Research Task Force, American Institute for Research - Evaluation of Restructured Schools Technical Working Group, and the National Center on Response to Interventions - Technical Review Committee and the Federal ARRA Evaluation Advisory Panel.  He has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from St. Olaf College, a Masters in Educational Statistics and a Doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota.  Dave was the 2009 recipient of the Council of Great City Schools research leadership award.  His current work focuses on the development and implementation of valid and equitable educational accountability and school improvement indicators.

Herb Heneman
hheneman@bus.wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-9175
Office: 653d Grainger Hall

Herb Heneman is the Dickson-Bascom Professor (Emeritus) of Management and Human Resources in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He also serves as a Senior Research Associate in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.  Herb has been a visiting faculty member at the University of Washington and University of Florida, and was University Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University.  His research is in the areas of staffing, performance management, union membership growth, work motivation, and compensation systems.  For the past decade Herb has been studying the design and effectiveness of compensation, performance management, and strategic human resource systems for teachers and principals in public schools.  Herb also served as the Director of Research for the Society for Human Resource Management Foundation Board.  Herb is the senior author of four textbooks: Managing Personnel and Human Resources: Strategies and Programs (1981), Perspectives on Personnel/Human Resource Management, 3/e (1986), Personnel/Human Resource Management, 4/e (1989), and Staffing Organizations, 6/e (2009).  Herb is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, former Chair of its Human Resources Division, and recipient of the Division’s Career Achievement Award.  Herb is also a member and Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.  Herb received the Michael R. Losey Research Award from the Society for Human Resource Management for his lifetime of research contributions.

Curtis Jones
cjjones5@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2621
Office: 772 Ed Sciences

Curtis Jones is a researcher and evaluator at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC). Curtis holds a M.A. in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in community and prevention research from the University of Illinois in Chicago. Before joining VARC, Curtis was the director of research and evaluation for Perspectives Charter Schools in Chicago and was the principal evaluator of after-school programs for the Chicago Public Schools. Curtis also has extensive policy research and evaluation experience, having served as the manager of research and evaluation for the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights in Chicago. Curtis's interests include evaluations of Out-of-School-Time (OST) activities, "non-academic" paths for improving students' academic performance, the interrelatedness of poverty, disability, behavior, and student outcomes, and the acculturation process of immigrant students and their families.

Anne Karch
askarch@wisc.edu | Phone (608) 263-7412
563 Educational Sciences

Anne Karch is a Project Assistant for Beth Graue in the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Anne's work for the current project examines how a District level school reform for data-based decision making plays out across all levels of the district (administration, school leaders, teachers and their classrooms).

Anne is a PhD student in Curriculum & Instruction with an interest in Teacher Professional Development and School Reform.  A classroom teacher, reading specialist and teacher leader for school based reform, Anne recently returned to graduate school after almost 20 years in the teaching workforce.  She holds an MA from Lesley College Graduate School in Teaching Reading and a certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language from UCLA.  Her BA is from Harvard, where she majored in Linguistics and Romance Languages.

John Keltz
keltz@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 265-2622
Office: 871C Ed Sciences

John works on evaluation projects and value-added modeling as an assistant researcher at VARC.  Recent projects have included short-cycle value-added and attendance value-added.  John began working at VARC after he received a Master's degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 2008.  He studied public and labor economics at Wisconsin and received an IES fellowship for education research.  John also worked as a research assistant at VARC studying Supplemental Education Services in Milwaukee and the READ 180 program.

Steven Kimball
skimball@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-6201
Office: 653C Ed Sciences

Steven Kimball is a researcher with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) and the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With VARC, Steve is contributing to the “harvesting” project for the Center on Educator Compensation Reform (CECR) that will collect and distill information from CECR monitors and technical assistance providers about best practices from the Federal Teacher Incentive Fund project.  Steve’s work with the CPRE Teacher Compensation Project has included research on standards-based teacher evaluation and compensation reforms. Steve is also the co-investigator of a study funded by the Institute for Educational Sciences on principal performance evaluation, and is coordinating research on the WCER evaluation of the Chicago Community Trust Education Initiative, which has invested over $55 million in educational interventions in Chicago.  He coordinated the VARC study of literacy coaching in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Steve is also starting research on innovative district human resource practices for the Strategic Management of Human Capital project with CPRE. Before joining CPRE, Steve held legislative analyst positions in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and the Texas State Office in Washington, D.C.  Steve completed his Ph.D. and M.S. from the U.W.-Madison Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in 2001.

Sara Kraemer
sbkraeme@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-5624
Office: 770 Ed Sciences

Sara Kraemer is an assistant researcher in the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) within the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Kraemer received her Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering, with a particular emphasis on human factors engineering, at UW-Madison. Dr. Kraemer is currently working in three research projects at VARC. She is a researcher participant in the Chicago Value-Added Project, the Center for Educator Compensation Reform and is also working on a case study evaluation of school improvement planning and processes in Milwaukee Public Schools.

Rachel Lander
rlander@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2879
Office: 653E Ed Sciences

Rachel Lander specializes in evaluating literacy programs and interventions in urban school districts. Using mixed-methods, she has researched several literacy programs in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), including Literacy Coaches, Direct Instruction, and READ 180, providing both formative and summative evaluations. She is currently leading a study in MPS of two literacy programs for special education students: LANGUAGE! and Unique. Using a contextualized approach, Dr. Lander analyzes how the organization of schools and districts influences the effectiveness of teaching and learning. She is also working on a U.S. Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) grant with the Boys & Girls Club and MPS, evaluating the Milwaukee Community Literacy Project. This project intends to increase the reading proficiency of struggling readers in kindergarten through 3rd grade through support in school, community, and family spheres. In addition to MPS, she has done extensive work in Chicago Public Schools and worked in the District of Columbia Public Schools. Dr. Lander also has expertise in qualitative research, strategic planning and logic models. During a multi-year project with the Chicago Community Trust Foundation, she has evaluated program effectiveness and worked with grantees on evaluation quality. She received her PhD from Michigan State University in Educational Policy, Curriculum, and Teacher Education. She began her education career as a middle school teacher in Phoenix, Arizona.

Nicholas Mader
nsmader@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-6840
Office: 871C Ed Sciences

Nicholas Mader is a PhD candidate in economics at UW-Madison with a focus on applied micrometrics and education policy. His dissertation research focuses on competition between schools for students in context of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. He is also a collaborating researcher with the Value-Added Research Center at the WCER, with an interest in developing Value-Added models to account for selection of families into schools and of students into classrooms.

Michelle Turner Mangan

Michelle Turner Mangan works on the integrated resource information system (IRIS) project with Milwaukee Public Schools. She is also an Assistant Professor at National-Louis University (NLU) in Chicago in the Educational Foundations and Inquiry department.  She teaches graduate-level courses in action research, school finance, and quantitative research methods at NLU as well as conducts research and policy work on school finance adequacy in Illinois.  She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, with a distributed minor in statistics.  Her dissertation focused on school-level uses of resources in Arkansas. Michelle has managed fieldwork of statewide adequacy studies in Arkansas, Washington, and Wyoming as a consultant with Lawrence O. Picus and Associates, LLC. Michelle is skilled in research, graduate-level instruction, and policy analysis, and has expertise in the areas of school finance, educational policy and more generally in the realm of educational leadership. She is experienced in working with diverse communities, specifically with low-income African American children and adults.

Sean McLaughlin
spmclaughlin@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2859
Office: 792 Ed Sciences

Sean McLaughlin is an associate research specialist at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He graduated in 2008 with a major in Elementary Education and minor in Physics from UW-Madison.  Sean began working at VARC as a student hourly employee in 2006.  His initial work involved investigating data warehouse structures for various districts as well as a project to organize and archive the work of VARC’s Senior Scientist, Robert Meyer.

In 2009, Sean was hired as academic staff as part of the professional development team at VARC.  In addition to continued work involving Value-Added data sets, and organization / archival of information, he now works on creating materials to present information on Value-Added to a variety of audiences.

Anthony Milanowski
amilanow@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 262-9872
Office: 661 Ed Sciences
Website

Anthony Milanowski is an assistant scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He received his PhD in industrial relations from UW-Madison.  His recent research has involved human capital management at the school level.  He helped to staff the Strategic Management of Human Capital Task Force.  He is also currently part of the Center for Educator Compensation Reform technical assistance staff, providing assistance to the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund grantees on teacher and principal performance evaluation.  Past work has included coordinating research on teacher compensation and performance evaluation for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) Teacher Compensation Project, developing a process for assessing human resource management program alignment, and studying new teachers’ responses to incentives.  He was also co-Principal Investigator of a study of standards-based principal evaluation systems, including an assessment of the relationship between principal evaluation ratings and value-added student achievement.  Before joining WCER, he was a human resource management professional for 16 years, working in compensation, staffing, and performance evaluation.

Ernie Morgan
ernestmorgan@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-3452
Office: 753H Ed Sciences

Ernie Morgan is a researcher at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1992 to 1996, Ernie served as an instructor on the Political Science faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and from 1996 to 1999 as an assistant professor of Economics and Political Science at the College of The Albemarle in Elizabeth City, NC. In 1999, he became the distance education coordinator for the College of The Albemarle. In 2000, Ernie joined the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) as the Website and Distance Learning Specialist for the Comprehensive Center Region VI (CCVI) project. In 2005, Ernie joined VARC. In his three years with VARC, he has served on a number of projects and currently heads up VARC's Professional Development team. Ernie holds an AB in Political Science and an MA in Economics from the University of Georgia; he is also a PhD candidate in Political Science at UGA.

Hiren Nisar
nisar@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-5650
Office: 796 Ed Sciences

Hiren Nisar is a project assistant at the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 2008.  He has worked on value added models (VAM) for the Chicago public schools and Milwaukee public schools.  His current projects are to evaluate the SES program in Chicago with Carolyn Heinrich and evaluation of charter schools in Milwaukee with Curtis Jones.  He is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for which he is working on his dissertation about effects of going to a charter school using Milwaukee public school data.  In May 2008, he received his Masters from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Economics to add to his Masters in Industrial Engineering and Operation research from University of California-Berkeley.  Hiren also has a Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Bombay, India.

Catherine Pautsch
pautsch@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2619
Office: 653H Ed Sciences

Catherine Pautsch is a project assistant on a qualitative study looking at the organizational school structures that support effective urban schools.  She also works on a program evaluation of the Language program in Milwaukee Public Schools.  Prior projects include studying an urban district's fidelity of implementation of the READ 180 program, a literacy coach program, and principal evaluation systems.  Catherine is currently writing her doctoral dissertation in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.  Previously she taught high school Spanish in North Carolina and received her undergraduate degree from the University of California-Berkeley in Political Science.

Steve Ponisciak
ponisciak@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 890-2316
Office: 798 Ed Sciences

Steve Ponisciak is an associate researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). He works in the Value Added Research Center at WCER and in the Department of Applied Research at Chicago Public Schools, as the main liaison between CPS and VARC. Prior to joining VARC, he was a senior research analyst at the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. He analyzed the PSAE, ACT, Explore, and Plan tests; teacher mobility; and value-added models. Steve earned a BS in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD from the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University.

Kirsten Ptak
kptak@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-1902
Office: 792 Ed Sciences

Kirsten Ptak assists VARC researchers with day-to-day tasks. She is an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in Sociology.

Larry Schultz
lwschult@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-3872
Office: 370H Ed Sciences

Larry Schultz has more than 15 years of data warehouse development, implementation, reporting and implementation experience. He has experience with the complete data warehouse project life cycle. He is skilled in Microsoft SQL Server, ETL techniques, data mining and the building of analytic files.

Melissa Sherfinski
msherfin@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-7412
Office: 563 Ed Sciences

Melissa Sherfinski is a Project Assistant on the qualitative evaluation of Wisconsin's SAGE project. She is a doctoral student in Curriculum & Instruction at UW and a former elementary school teacher.

Tim St. Louis
tjstlouis@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-5785
Office: 575C Educational Sciences

Tim St. Louis is a research assistant in the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin.  Over the course of his professional life, Tim has moved from investment banking to corporate finance to teaching high school math to a Master's degree program (M.Ed.) to his current station.  On top of his assistantship duties, Tim is a graduate student in both the Education Policy Studies (EPS) and Public Affairs (LaFollette) departments.

While Tim has lived in and has worked in/with/for the public schools systems of Chicago, Denver, and Seattle, he was raised in the Madison area and attended UW-Madison as an undergraduate.  His academic and research interests include enhancing secondary school quality, increasing equitable access to postsecondary education, and assisting low-income students transition to college.

Jeff Watson
jgwatson@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-0436
Office: 772 Ed Sciences

Jeff Watson focuses on how information technology systems support quality and improvement in K-12 education. In his role as researcher at the Value-Added Research Center at WCER he looks at data quality, data warehousing strategies and issues, system integration and development, decision support, data-driven decision making, and quality and improvement for the Integrated Resource Information Systems (IRIS) Project (funded 3/1/08 by IES). 

Peter Witham
pwitham@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 265-2620
Office: 871B Ed Sciences

Peter Witham joined VARC from Vanderbilt University where he served as a Technical Assistance provider to the 34 school districts receiving Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants. Peter is currently working on three projects at VARC; 1) providing technical assistance through the Center for Educator Compensation Reform (CECR) for Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) districts, 2) contributing to the CECR “Harvesting Project,” which will collect and analyze documents from TIF Grantees, TA Providers, and Monitors about best practices from the Federal Teacher Incentive Fund Project, 3) collaborating with Milwaukee Public Schools in the design and implementation of a Value Added professional development program for the newly created Cluster Leadership Teams. In May 2007, Peter received his doctorate from Vanderbilt University in educational leadership and policy, for which his dissertation was on Teacher/Principal Data Driven Decision Making in Metro Nashville Public Schools. He taught elementary and middle school for 4 years. Peter holds a M.T.S from Vanderbilt Divinity School in Religious Studies, and a B.A. in History and Spanish from Pepperdine University. 

VARC is housed within the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at
the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Copyright ©2008, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System