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.

Patricia Burch
pburch@wisc.edu
Phone: (608) 262-1717 | Office: 257 Education
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 Research in 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 work conducted to date include evaluations of MPS summer school programs, a single-gender classroom initiative at an MPS middle school, and the MPS/Milwaukee Recreation Arts Partnership program. Ongoing work includes the establishment of a postsecondary tracking system for MPS graduates and the development of an "early warning" system to identify students at high risk of dropping out. 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, the Office of Educational Accountability at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, and the Center on Education and Work at UW-Madison.

Huiping 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 received a B.S. in psychology and French from UW-Madison. After graduation, she worked as a research specialist at the UW Twin Center under the direction of Dr. H. Hill Goldsmith in the Department of Psychology for eight years before coming to VARC. As the research manager, she oversees many of the financial and human subjects responsibilities.

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. It was her interest in online schooling that compelled her to pursue a doctorate. She has a BA and M Ed from The Ohio State University.

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. Current projects also include an evaluation of charter schools authorized by Milwaukee Public Schools and an evaluation of a reading intervention program. 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 and Instruction. Her areas of interest include readiness, class size reduction, preparing teachers for inclusive home-school relations, and qualitative research methods. She is currently part of a team of WCER researchers conducting an evaluation of Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee for Education (SAGE).

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

Douglas Harris is an economist whose research explores how the level and equity of student educational outcomes are influenced by education policies such as desegregation, standards, teacher certification, test-based accountability, school choice, privatization, and school finance. His work also focuses on the educational role of factors such as families and neighborhoods and the way in which educational outcomes affect the long-term labor market success of individual students and the overall competitiveness of national economies. In studying these topics, he develops and utilizes innovative research methods, including value-added modeling, mixed methods, and cost analysis. His research is frequently cited in current policy debates and he consults widely on policy matters with organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, RAND, the U.S. Department of Education, and state education agencies. He received his doctoral degree from Michigan State University in Economics in 2000.

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, a Regina Loughlin Scholar, and the associate director of research and training at the Institute for Research on Poverty. 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 on an evaluation of workforce development programs, the state of Wisconsin on a child-support demonstration program, Milwaukee Public Schools in the evaluation of supplemental educational services, and the governments of Brazil and South Africa on their social and human capital development programs. Other ongoing projects involve the study of labor market intermediaries and labor market outcomes for low-skilled and disadvantaged workers, policy factors that support effective provision of substance abuse treatment services, and the use and impacts of social investment funds in developing countries.

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

John Keltz received a Master's degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin in 2008, and a bachelor's degree in math and economics from Case Western Reserve University in 2005. He studied public and education 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: 869 Ed Sciences

Rachel Lander leads a study of the READ 180 program in Milwaukee Public Schools. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her graduate work at Michigan State University. She previously taught middle school in Arizona and educated prospective teachers in Washington D.C.

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 Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). He received his Ph.D. in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1997. He has been coordinating the Teacher Compensation Project’s research on standards-based teacher evaluation and the assessment of the criterion-related validity of systems based on the Framework for Teaching across the project’s four current sites. Before joining CPRE, he worked in human resource management for 16 years, primarily with the Wisconsin Department of Employment Relations. He has taught human resource management courses for the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business and Department of Educational Administration.

Ernie Morgan
ernestmorgan@wisc.edu | Phone: (608) 263-3452
Office: 768 Ed Sciences

Ernie Morgan is an associate 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. He works with value added models (VAM) for the Chicago public schools. 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 switching costs in Telecommunications industry. 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 studying the fidelity of implementation of the READ 180 program in Milwaukee Public Schools. She has assisted in a literacy coach study, a study of principal evaluation systems, and a study on teacher recruitment and retention. Catherine is currently working on a PhD 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.

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.