SUSANNA LOEB, Stanford University
I am pleased to be considered for the APPAM Policy Council. As a member of APPAM and a regular participant in the research conferences, I have seen the links that this organization provides among researchers, policy makers and practitioners and the role that it plays in advancing the field of policy analysis. In a time when technical solutions can contribute to better policy decisions, APPAM as an organization and each of us as its members have a great opportunity both to contribute to better policy decisions today and to figure out better approaches to policy analysis and dissemination so that this work can be even more useful in the future. As member of APPAM, I hope to work towards these goals, identifying productive means to improve links and to support new research and promising new approaches to research. I received an MPP and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan and am now a professor at Stanford University where I study education policy. My main line of research looks at the teacher workforce and how policies can help improve teacher effectiveness and reduce the inequities in teacher quality across schools. I also study school finance systems and particularly the relationship between state and district decision making and how this interaction impacts both the distribution of funds across schools and the effectiveness of school governance. I direct two centers, the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice (IREPP) and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). IREPP is a research and education center where our goal is to produce and improve education policy research and to train the next generation of researchers through doctoral and post-doctoral education. PACE is an education policy dissemination center that works with universities throughout California and with stakeholders in the state capital to make research accessible and useful.