Education Research Alliance for New Orleans

Position Title/Short Description

Full Text of JOE Listing:

The Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (ERA-New Orleans) and the newly formed National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH) together seek a Senior Research Fellow (SRF) to lead objective and rigorous research about market-based school reforms across the nation.

The SRF will be based, along with these two centers, within the Department of Economics at Tulane University, located in New Orleans.

The SRF will have the opportunity to lead original research and collaborate on both REACH and ERA-New Orleans studies with our team of researchers, post-doctoral fellows, research analysts, and top education researchers across the nation. As part of this work, the SRF will supervise research analysts and be responsible for managing the collection, cleaning, and coding of two expansive data systems described below.

Recently funded by a 5-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, REACH is based at Tulane University in partnership with Michigan State University, Syracuse University, and the University of Southern California. To carry out our ambitious national REACH agenda, we are creating the National Longitudinal School Choice Database (NLSCD), a 25-year panel of school-level outcomes from traditional public, charter, and private schools; charter school applications and authorizer information; and detailed state policy data. These data will be used to carry out descriptive research on the patterns and trends in school choice policies—ranging from charter schools to vouchers and virtual schools—and quasi-experimental analyses of the effects of policy design.

ERA-New Orleans also carries out research on school choice and related market-based school reforms, but focuses specifically on the unprecedented charter-based school reforms put in place in the city after Hurricane Katrina. This local work utilizes a 15-year student- and teacher-level panel of data throughout the state of Louisiana. ERA-New Orleans and REACH are both based in the same offices and under the same director as REACH, and work in close collaboration.

Successful candidates must hold a PhD and have expertise and experience in quantitative, and especially quasi-experimental, research methods. As interdisciplinary research centers, we are open to various disciplinary backgrounds, including economics, sociology, public policy, and education. Real-world experience in education and/or public policy is also preferred. We are open to a range of experience levels.

Working at ERA-New Orleans and REACH offers opportunities to inform and influence education policy here in New Orleans and across the country. We hope you’ll join us.

Contact Deanna Allen (dallen10@tulane.edu) with any questions.