Professor of Education, Diane and McDonald Becket Professor in Educational Policy & Director of Center on Educational Governance
Ph.D., Northwestern University

Concentration: K-12 Education Policy
Expertise: An expert on charter schools, educational governance and school reform...additional information

E-Mail: wohlstet@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 740-3450

Curriculum Vitae & Publications

Priscilla Wohlstetter is the Diane and MacDonald Becket Professor in Educational Policy at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education, where she also directs USC's Center on Educational Governance. Dr. Wohlstetter holds joint courtesy appointments in the College (Political Science Department), the School of Architecture, and the School of Policy, Planning and Development. She teaches courses on the laws and politics of education, educational innovations, and accountability in public education.

Her research explores the policy and politics of K-12 urban education, as well as the relationship between school governance and improved school performance. She has served as principal investigator for numerous national and international studies focusing on urban reform. She directed a national study of charter schools and public-private partnerships, and served as co-director for the National Resource Center for Charter School Finance and Governance, both funded by the U.S. Department of Education. With support from a private foundation, she to establish a working collaborative with four urban Southern California school districts to boost faculty collaboration and student achievement. Finally, in partnership with the charter community, she developed a state accountability system for California charter schools (USC School Performance Dashboard) which reports both academic and financial performance. Her publications include numerous articles on federal and state education policies, local governance, public-private partnerships,, and the use of data-driven decision making to improve school performance. Books include Taking Account of Charter Schools, Federalism Reconsidered: The Case of the No Child Left Behind Act, and Organizing for High-Performance. She is currently working on a book (under contract with Harvard Education Press) evaluating the research on charter schools.

She is a member of the advisory board of the National Charter School Research Project at the Center for Reinventing Public Education, and was recently appointed to the Broad Foundation national review panel for the Broad Public Charter School Prize. Dr. Wohlstetter is currently a visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University where she also serves as a senior researcher with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.

Prior to her tenure at USC, Dr. Wohlstetter had a post-doctoral fellowship at RAND. She received her masters in education and social policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her Ph.D. in public policy from Northwestern University.