Biography
Lauren Lefty, Ph.D. is a historian of education interested in applying the critical study of the past to contemporary questions of educational equity. In particular, her work centers on urban education, the relationship between empire and schooling, teacher education, and questions of social justice and decoloniality in the Americas. Her current book project, Seize the Schools: Empire, Education, and Resistance in Postwar New York and Puerto Rico (University of Pennsylvania Press), tells an entangled history of K–12 education politics in New York City and the colonial commonwealth of Puerto Rico during the age of decolonization and civil rights. She is also the co-author with James W. Fraser of Teaching Teachers: Changing Paths and Enduring Debates (JHU Press, 2018) and Teaching the World’s Teachers (JHU Press, 2020), both of which analyze the rise of alternative teacher preparation models in the U.S. and around the world from a historical perspective.
Dr. Lefty is also active in the field of public humanities, committed to bringing the insights of historical and educational scholarship in conversation with audiences outside the academy. In this vein, she has worked with the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools program, the Museum of the City of New York, two NEH-funded Teacher Institutes, “Centering Youth Agency in the Civil Rights Movement” and “Indigenous Histories of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands,” and various teacher professional development and public history projects.
Before coming to Penn GSE, Dr. Lefty served as director of the Secondary History & Social Studies Education program in the History Department at Northern Arizona University. She is also a former classroom teacher (in Texas and New York) and worked in policy for the New York City Department of Education.
Education
- Ph.D. (History of Education) New York University, 2020
- B.A. (History) New York University, 2010
Areas of Expertise
- History of education
- Urban education reform and activism
- Education and empire
- Culturally sustaining and decolonial pedagogies
- Teacher education
- History and social studies pedagogy
- Public humanities
Links
Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Lefty’s research combines her interests in educational equity across the Americas and the history and policy of teacher preparation. Her current book project is entitled Seize the Schools: Empire, Education, and Resistance in Postwar New York and Puerto Rico (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming). This monograph tells an entangled history of K–12 education politics in New York City and Puerto Rico during the age of decolonization and civil rights. By analyzing the circulation of politicians, policymakers, activists, teachers, and families across colonial borders, it reveals how key postwar education policy milestones—including the educational programs of the War on Poverty, the movement for community control of schools, and bilingual–bicultural education—were profoundly shaped by the forces of American empire, but also the bold political visions forged in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Seize the Schools therefore sheds light on the coloniality of power baked into the U.S. public education system, as well as the anti-colonial politics and decolonial visions schools engender, past and present. Related to this topic, she is also co-editing the volume Puerto Ricans Organizing for Educational Change: Aspira, History, and Building Bilingual Education Rights in New York with Victoria Nuñez and José Laguarta Ramírez.
Dr. Lefty is also the co-author and editor of two books on teacher education. The first, Teaching Teachers: Changing Paths and Enduring Debates (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), with James W. Fraser, considers the meteoric rise of alternative certification programs at the turn of the twenty-first century. Their study approaches this dramatic transformation in American teacher preparation from a historical lens, asking why this happened and to what effect. Their second book, Teaching the World’s Teachers: A History, 1980–2020 (JHU Press, 2020) is an edited volume tracking similar changes from a global perspective in collaboration with scholars from ten countries.
Dr. Lefty is also soon to publish three book chapters: on the politics of bilingual education in post-1960s New York City, Puerto Rican high school activism in postwar New York, and the history and legacy of the CDF Freedom Schools.