USC EdPolicy Hub

The Hub is based at the USC Rossier School of Education as part of Dean Pedro Noguera’s Educational Equity Initiative. USC Rossier has an unparalleled network of graduates working as district leaders across Southern California. From our USC Rossier base, we will bring in expertise from across the university including the USC Price School of Public Policy, the Center for Applied Research in Education, and other research centers and researchers both within and beyond USC Rossier, ensuring that we can always match the appropriate expertise and methods to the problems at hand.

USC Rossier has an unparalleled network of graduates working as district leaders in Southern California and across the state with whom we are collaborating to drive this work. This includes more than 80 superintendents who are active in the Dean’s Superintendent Advisory Group.

Jon Fullerton, Hub Executive Director, is a Research Professor at USC Rossier. He has over twenty years’ experience in using data to guide system improvement and the effective use of financial resources in the education sector. Before coming to USC, Fullerton was the Executive Director of the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University. While at CEPR, he founded the Strategic Data Project (SDP) which places and trains analytic data fellows across the PK12 and postsecondary sectors. Fullerton has also served as the Board of Education’s Director of Budget and Financial Policy for the Los Angeles Unified School District and was Vice-President of Strategy, Evaluation, Research, and Policy at the Los Angeles Education Partnership.

Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, Hub Director of Research, is a Research Scientist and co-director of CARE. She is an applied education researcher with specialization in the areas of student-centered pedagogy, and families’ experiences with education. She currently co-leads USC’s Understanding America Study education work with Dr. Polikoff. Her recent research prompted the College Board to change their teacher professional learning, curriculum, and/or exams to be more project-based in a third of their AP courses, with more changes forthcoming.

Morgan Polikoff, Hub Faculty co-Director, is an Associate Professor of Education at USC Rossier. He studies curriculum, standards, accountability, and assessment policy and is the author of 2021’s Beyond Standards: The Fragmentation of Education Governance and the Promise of Curriculum Reform. He also investigates public opinion on education policy and families’ experiences in schools using state- and nationally-representative surveys, including USC’s Understanding America Study.

Patricia Burch, Hub Faculty co-Director, is a Professor of Education at USC Rossier with over twenty-five years of experience studying educational reforms. She works in partnership with local, state and Federal policy makers to understand contemporary controversies and practical dilemmas in advancing educational equity. She is the author of numerous articles on these topics including (with Carolyn Heinrich) the 2016 Mixed Methods for Policy Research and Program Evaluation.

Soumya Mishra is a postdoctoral research associate with the IES-funded Leveraging Technology and Student Engagement (LTES) project. Soumya’s research interests include student access and success in American community colleges as well as higher education policy in South Asian countries. Her current work involves mixed methods research on institutional responses to instructional challenges created by Covid-19, differences in student outcomes between various instructional modalities, and cost analysis of instruction across modalities. Soumya holds a bachelors degree from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University. She earned a masters and PhD in Education Policy from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Marco Torres is a project researcher with the USC EdPolicy Hub. Marco has a masters degree from the Leadership and Policy Studies program at Steinhardt School of Education at New York University and has worked alongside organizations such as The Center for an Urban Future, Make the Road New York, Ronald McDonald House - NYC, and the Rockefeller School of Government. Marco served as a lead researcher and writer on the 2021 ETS /College Promise report on first-generation student success, contributed to a book chapter in the recently published Working for a Future: Equity and Access in Work-based Learning for Young People, and, has co-written an academic paper on Latinx leadership and higher education, which was published in the 2021 Fall Issue of the Journal of Applied Research in Community Colleges (JARCC).