Katie Barghaus is a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania studying Policy Research, Evaluation and Measurement at the Graduate School of Education. Prior to attending GSE, she spent two years working as a research assistant at the National Bureau of Economic Research. There she worked on several projects including a study that explored racial differences in the mental abilities of young children, an evaluation of a reading incentives program, and a project that examined the development of the gender gap in math achievement from 1st through 5th grades. She is also coauthoring a paper that, among other things, examines the role education plays in creating and perpetuating health disparities. Katie's main interests are in evaluating and developing educational reform programs intended to help close achievement gaps. Katie holds a B.S. in Economics from the Pennsylvania State University.

email: barghaus@dolphin.upenn.edu

Ning Rui is a Ph.D. candidate in Policy Research, Evaluation, and Measurement. He is currently the Project Manager for a quasi-experimental evaluation of South Jersey Math/Science Partnership, an intensive teacher professional development project involving 20 school districts in South Jersey (funded by USDOE), and an external consultant for a school finance quantification project that examines the relationship between school resource allocation and student standardized test performance for Math and Science Partnership Greater Philadelphia, a $12.5 million Math and Science Partnership grant funded by NSF. Ning has also been working with colleagues at the Chinese Cochrane Centre on an international comparative study of evidence-based disaster management in South Asia (the 2004 Asian Tsunami), the U.S. (the 2005 Hurricane Katrina) and China (the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake). In his spare time, he serves as a consultant for Philadelphia Presbytery Head Start Learning Tree, a non-profit local organization that aims to provide quality center-based programs to promote cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of 3 to 5 year old children from low-income families.

email: nrui@dolphin.upenn.edu

Clare Waterman is a doctoral student in the Policy Research, Evaluation, and Measurement program in the Graduate School of Education. Since 2004, Clare has worked with the Research and Evaluation Team on the Evidence-Based Program for the Integration of Curricula. Specifically, she has been involved with the development of a criterion referenced test for use with pre-school children, as well as the implementation of the assessment as part of a randomized field trial. Her main interests include test development and applied research in the areas of early childhood and special education.

email: clare3@dolphin.upenn.edu

Rui Yang is a doctoral student in Policy Research, Evaluation and Measurement. He did his undergraduate study in Mathematics in Peking University in China. Before coming to GSE, he got a master’s degree in statistics at the University of Delaware. His research interests include teachers’ characteristics on student achievement; policy issues related to education reform and international comparison in education.

email: ruiyang@gse.upenn.edu