Measuring education disparity

I grew up in a rural area, and did well at school. My freshman year at college, I sat in class with many students who came from affluent communities and went to prestigious high schools. As a student from an under-resourced school, I was shocked by the differences in resources and opportunities in their educational experiences.

Ultimately, I did succeed, but the experience motivated me to try to understand the disparities in American education. Penn GSE’s Quantitative Methods Ph.D. program equipped me with the methodological skills to do impactful applied education research that will hopefully answer some of those questions.

Professor Paul McDermott became a role model for me. He showed me how, with the right methodological foundation, you can work in different areas of education, in different age ranges. He taught me you can go after opportunities and not have to worry about being pigeonholed.

I took classes with students studying education policy and human development. That helped keep the methodological lessons grounded in debates about how students learn, and how schools can and should support that learning.

Penn was also a place I could explore my interests. I took a mapping course in city planning at the School of Design. I don’t know if I’ll use mapping software in my work, but the it was a different kind of challenge that I found stimulating.

The professors at Penn GSE are renowned experts in the field, and they used their relationships to create opportunities for me. In one case, I did an internship at a prestigious organization where I learned about the intersection of assessment and policy. That might not be exciting, but it proved very useful. In another internship with a nonprofit, I saw how research can be used to influence policy.

When I started at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, I didn’t have extensive experience in early childhood education, but my quantitative skills allowed me to hit the ground running. As a researcher at WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, I am focused on improving the educational achievement of multilingual learners, particularly in the early childhood years. I can do these things because Penn GSE prepared me for anything.