Faculty

Gary Orfield, Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests are in the study of civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity. He was co-founder and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, and now serves as co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. His central interest has been the development and implementation of social policy, particularly the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in American society. Orfield is a member of the National Academy of Education and has received numerous awards, including the Teachers College Medal, Social Justice Award of the AERA, the American Political Science Association Charles Merriam Award for his “contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research,” and honorary PhDs. Orfield’s research includes 12 co-authored or co-edited books since 2004 and scores of articles and reports. In addition to scholarly work, he has served as expert witness or special master in more than three dozen class action civil rights cases, on school desegregation, housing discrimination and other issues, and as consultant to many school districts, federal, state and local governments, civil rights and teachers organizations.  He and various collaborators have organized amicus briefs to the Supreme Court on all the major school and affirmative action decisions over the last two decades.

Forthcoming books include Accountability and Opportunity in Higher Education: The Civil Rights Dimension (with Nicholas Hillman), Harvard Education Press (2018) and Discrimination in Elite Public Schools: Investigating Buffalo (with Jennifer Ayscue), Teachers College Press (2018). Orfield also edited the 2017 Educational Testing Service report, Alternative Paths to Diversity: Exploring and Implementing Effective College Admissions Policies. “A Life in Civil Rights” appeared in the October 2010 issue of PS: Political Science & Politics.

Other books he co-wrote or co-edited are: 

• Educational Delusions? Why Choice can Deepen Inequality and How to Make Schools Fair (with E. Frankenberg), Berkeley: University of California Press (2013)
• The Resegregation of Suburban Schools: A Hidden Crisis in American Education (with E. Frankenberg), Cambridge: Harvard Education Press (2012)
• Lessons In Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America's Public Schools (with E. Frankenberg), Charlottesville: UVA Press (2008)
• Twenty-First Century Color Lines (with Andrew Grant-Thomas), Philadelphia: Temple University Press (2009)
• Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education (with P. Gandara and C. Horn), Albany: SUNY Press (2006)
• Latino Educational Opportunity: New Directions for Community Colleges, 133 (2) (with C. Horn and S. Flores), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley (2006)
• School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? (with John Boger), Chapel Hill: UNC Press (2005)
• Higher Education and the Color Line (with Patricia Marin and Catherine Horn), Cambridge: Harvard Education Press (2005)
• Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis, Cambridge: Harvard Education Press (2004)

Dennis D. Parker, J.D., is the Director of the ACLU National Office's Racial Justice Program, where he coordinates the racial justice work done by the ACLU's national office and its affiliates. He has testified before the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues: Minorities and the Right to Education and appeared in the African American Policy Forum series: 13 Myths About Affirmative Action. Parker’s work with the ACLU has brought needed attention to the school-to-prison-pipeline tracking many of young Black and Latino students from the principal’s office to the nation’s expanding prison industrial complex.  
 
Prior to joining the ACLU, Parker was the Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the Office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer where he oversaw the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in housing, employment, voting, public accommodations and credit. He spent 14 years at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where he supervised the litigation of scores of cases throughout the country in matters involving elementary and secondary education, affirmative action in higher education and equal educational opportunity.   
 
Parker has also worked with the New York Legal Aid Society. He has numerous publications on housing discrimination, educational equity, affirmative action, and testing, and has served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School. He is the author of the 1993 edition of the Fair Housing Litigation Handbook, and he wrote a chapter in this year's Awakening from the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice. He  lectures on Race, Poverty and Constitutional Law at Columbia University's School Law Institute and is an adjunct professor at New York Law School. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and Harvard Law School. 

Carol Corbett Burris became Executive Director of the Network for Public Education in August 2015, after serving as principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District in NY since 2000. Prior to becoming a principal, she was a teacher at both the middle and high school level. She received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, and her dissertation, which studied her district’s detracking reform in math, received the 2003 National Association of Secondary Schools’ Principals Middle Level Dissertation of the Year Award. In 2010, she was named Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013, she was named SAANYS New York State High School Principal of the Year. Dr. Burris co-authored Detracking for Excellence and Equity (2008) and Opening the Common Core: How to Bring ALL Students to College and Career Readiness (2012), and authored On the Same Track: How Schools Can Join the 21st Century Struggle against Re-segregation (2014). Her articles have appeared in Educational Leadership,Kappan, American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, Theory into Practice, School Administrator, American School Board Journal and Education Week. She regularly expresses her concerns about the misuse and unintended consequences of high-stakes testing on the Washington Post, The Answer Sheet blog.

Jay P. Heubert, J.D., Ed.D. (Institute Faculty Chair), is a Professor of Law and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He received his J.D. cum laude and his Ed.D. from Harvard University.

For eighteen years at Columbia and thirteen at Harvard, he has taught interdisciplinary courses on education law, policy, and practice for students in education, law, government, and related fields. His research has focused on civil rights issues in education, including desegregation, tracking, high-stakes testing, interprofessional collaboration between educators, lawyers, and researchers, the obligations of charter schools to serve students with disabilities, and the role of law in school reform. As a Carnegie Scholar, he studied how testing for student tracking, promotion, and graduation affects the learning and life chances of low-SES students, students of color, English-language learners, and students with disabilities.

He has also served as chief counsel to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a specialist on desegregation and gender equity in the School District of Philadelphia, and a high-school English teacher in rural North Carolina. In 1997-98, he served as study director for a National Research Council committee conducting a Congressionally-mandated study of high-stakes testing published as High Stakes: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation. Among the awards he has received are a Special Commendation from the Attorney General of the U.S. for outstanding performance as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice (1983), a number of teaching awards at Columbia and Harvard, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s annual Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education (2001).

John B. King, Jr., Ed.D., J.D., is the President and CEO of The Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization that aims to identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps, from preschool through college. He served as the U.S. Secretary of Education from 2016 through 2017. In tapping him to lead the U.S. Department of Education, President Obama called Dr. King "an exceptionally talented educator," citing his commitment to "preparing every child for success" and his lifelong dedication to education as a teacher, principal, and leader of schools and school systems.

Before becoming Secretary, Secretary King had served at the Department since January 2015 and carried out the duties of the Deputy Secretary, overseeing all preschool-through-12th-grade education policies and programs as well as Department operations. Secretary King joined the Department following his tenure as the first African-American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State Education Commissioner, a post he held from 2011 to 2015.

King began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher in Puerto Rico and Boston and a middle school principal.  

He credits New York City public school teachers — particularly educators at P.S. 276 in Canarsie and Mark Twain J.H.S. in Coney Island — for saving his life by providing rich, engaging, and transformative educational experiences and giving him hope about the future.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Master of Arts in the teaching of social studies and a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University. 

Maree Sneed, J.D., Ph.D., is recognized in the education industry as a lawyer who helps school districts, independent schools, educational institutions, and educational companies solve their most complex problems. For three decades, clients have sought Maree's advice as a result of her experience working in the education system, her legal acumen, her public policy work, and her ability to make connections between the education and legal arenas.

Maree has advised clients in the education sector on a broad range of issues, including social media, bullying and cyberbullying, harassment, sex and race discrimination, English language learners, and magnet schools. She also advises on privacy, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act; special education/IDEA; equitable access and opportunities; integration and desegregation; school facilities; contracts; Title IX, Title VI, and 504 compliance; and charter schools.

Maree has provided regulatory advice to clients and litigated cases for clients in state courts as well as federal, district, and appellate courts. Maree and her team worked on two important Supreme Court cases involving school districts — Schafer v. Weast and PICs v. Seattle School District No. 1. Maree has also represented school districts in Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations and negotiated voluntary resolution agreements.

Prior to attending law school, Maree was a high school teacher, secondary principal, and assistant principal in Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools. She has a masters and doctorate in education. For many years, she taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Currently she is a member of the Magnet Schools of America Board of Directors. Maree has served on the Board of the Council of School of Attorneys and on the Board of the National School Boards Foundation.

Michael A. Rebell, J.D., is an experienced litigator, administrator, researcher, and scholar in the field of education law. He is the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity and Professor of Law and Educational Practice at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Campaign seeks to promote equity and excellence in education and to overcome the gap in educational access and achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged students throughout the United States. 

Previously, Mr. Rebell was the co-founder, executive director and counsel for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. In CFE v. State of New York, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, declared that all children are entitled under the state Constitution to the "opportunity for a sound basic education" and it ordered the State of New York to reform its education finance system to meet these constitutional requirements. Mr. Rebell is currently co-counsel for plaintiffs in NYSER v. State of New York, a case filed in February, 2014 that is asking the court to enforce the CFE orders and compel the state to provide sufficient funds to provide all students in New York State the opportunity for a sound basic education.  He has also litigated numerous major class action lawsuits, including Jose P. v. Mills, which involved a plaintiff class of 160,000 students with disabilities. He also served as a court-appointed special master in the Boston special education case, Allen v. Parks.

Mr. Rebell is the author or co-author of five books, and dozens of articles on issues of law and education. Among his most recent works are Courts And Kids: Pursuing Educational Equity Through The State Courts (U. Chicago Press, 2009), Moving Every Child Ahead: From NCLB Hype To Meaningful Educational Opportunity (Teachers College Press, 2008) with Jessica R. Wolff, The Right to Comprehensive Educational Opportunity, 47 Harvard Civil Rts-Civil Lib. L. Rev. 49 (2012), and Professional Rigor, Public Engagement and Judicial Review: A Proposal for Enhancing the Validity of Education Adequacy Studies, 109 Teachers Coll. Rec. 1303 (2007).

In addition to his research and litigation activities, Mr. Rebell is a frequent lecturer and consultant on education law. He is also currently adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Previously he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School, and for many years, a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale Law School. Mr. Rebell is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School.

Patricia Gándara, Ph.D., is Research Professor and Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. She is also Director of Education for the University of California-Mexico Initiative.  Gándara is an elected fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the National Academy of Education. In 2011 she was appointed to President Obama’s Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, and in 2015 received the Distinguished Career Award from the Scholars of Color Committee of the American Educational Research Association.  Her most recent books are The Latino Education Crisis (2009); Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies (2010), and The Bilingual Advantage: Language, Literacy, and the U.S. Labor Market (2014).  She is currently preparing a manuscript on the Impact of Immigration Enforcement Policies on Teaching and Learning in the Nation’s Schools.

Rhoda Schneider, J.D. (Institute Co-Chair), is General Counsel and Senior Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. For over 35 years she has been chief legal counsel to the commissioner, state board, and department staff. She has advised seven successive commissioners and served twice herself as acting commissioner. Besides providing legal guidance to the commissioner and the agency, Rhoda and her staff also publish advisories for school and district leaders, parents and students, and other constituents on the state and federal laws affecting public elementary and secondary schools. The issues of education law and policy that she addresses include standards-based education reform, civil rights, charter schools, school finance and governance, student assessment, special education, school and district accountability, student rights and responsibilities, and educator licensure. Rhoda is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her J.D. from Boston University Law School. She is an adjunct lecturer at The Harvard Graduate School of Education and has been a presenter or guest lecturer at many professional conferences and graduate courses for educators and lawyers. Rhoda is also the editor of the MCLE book, School Law in Massachusetts.

Perry A. Zirkel, Ph.D., is University Professor Emeritus of Education and Law at Lehigh University, where he formerly was dean of the College of Education, subsequently held the Iacocca Chair in Education for its five-year term, and continues to co-direct the Lehigh Special Education Law Symposium.  He has a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut, and a Master of Laws degree from Yale University.  He has written more than 1,475 publications on various aspects of school law, with an emphasis on legal issues in special education.  He writes a regular column for NAESP’s Principal magazine and NASP’s Communiqué newsletter, and he did so previously for Phi Delta Kappan and Teaching Exceptional Children.  Past president of the Education Law Association and co-chair of the Pennsylvania special education appeals panel from 1990 to 2007, he is the author of the CEC monograph The Legal Meaning of Specific Learning Disability; the more recently published books, A Digest of Supreme Court Decisions Affecting Education and Student Teaching and the Law; and the two-volume reference Section 504, the ADA and the Schools, now in its fourth edition.  In 2012, he received Research into Practice Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Excellence in Research Award from AERA’s Division A (Administration, Organization & Leadership).  In 2013, he received the University Council for Educational Administration’s Edwin Bridges award for significant contributions to the preparation and development of school leaders.  In 2016, he received the Education Law Association’s Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law, and in 2017 he received the Council for Exceptional Children’s Special Education Research Award.

E-mail address: perry.zirkel@lehigh.edu

Telephone no.:  610/758-3239

Website: perryzirkel.com