EDRE Lecture Series

The University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform is pleased to announce these events as part of our 2025-2026 Lecture Series. All lectures will be held on Fridays from noon - 1:30 p.m. in GRAD 343, unless otherwise noted below.

The program is open to the public and includes a complementary lunch catered by the Flying Burrito. Please arrive a few minutes minutes early to make a plate from the taco bar before the lecture begins. 

While speakers listed are confirmed, details on their presentations may be delayed; please check back. Direct questions to Miranda Vernon.

Fall 2025 Lecture Series

Sept. 12: Felipe Barrera-Osorio

Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics, Vanderbilt University

Lecture Title: "Private Provision of Public Education: Recent Experimental Evidence"

Suggested Readings:

  • TBA

Sept. 19: Emily Penner

Associate Professor of Education, University of California, Irvine

Lecture Title: "Cultural Relevance at Scale"

Suggested Readings:

  • TBA

Oct. 3: Rachel White

Associate Professor, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy, University of Texas, Austin

Lecture Title: "Beyond Binaries in Measuring District Leadership Turnover"

Suggested Readings:

  • Rachel S. White, Johnathon Jerman; Illustrating the power and complexity of a National Longitudinal Superintendent Database through an exploration of cross-state mobility. Journal of Educational Administration 31 July 2025; 63 (4): 302–314. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2024-0211
  • White, R. S. (2023). Ceilings Made of Glass and Leaving En Masse? Examining Superintendent Gender Gaps and Turnover Over Time Across the United States. Educational Researcher, 52(5), 272-285. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231163139 (Original work published 2023)
  • Rachel S. White (2025). "Superintendents," in Live Handbook of Education Policy Research, in Douglas Harris (ed.), Association for Education Finance and Policy, viewed 09/26/2025, https://livehandbook.org/assets/livehandbook/superintendents-white-formatted.pdf

Nov. 7: Beth Schueler

Associate Professor of Education, Stanford University

Lecture Title: "Public Knowledge and Opinion on School Board Elections"

Suggested Readings:

  • TBA

Spring 2026 Lecture Series

Jan. 30: Nat Malkus

Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute

Lecture Title: "A Voucher Priced to Work"

Suggested Readings:

  • TBA

Feb. 6: Heather Hill

Hazen-Nicoli Professor in Teacher Learning and Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Lecture Title: "Mpowering Teachers: A Machine Learning Tool for Instructional Measurement and Feedback"

Suggested Readings:

  • Alic, S., Demszky, D., Mancenido, Z., Liu, J., Hill H., & Jurafsky, D. (2022). Computationally identifying funneling and focusing questions in classroom discourse. arXiv preprint at arXiv:2208.04715.
  • Demszky, D., Liu, J., Hill, H. C., Sanghi, S., & Chung, A. (2023). Improving Teachers' Questioning Quality through Automated Feedback: A Mixed-Methods Randomized Controlled Trial in Brick-and-Mortar Classrooms. EdWorkingPaper No. 23-875. Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

Apr. 3: Lorenzo Neri

Assistant Professor, Tor Vergata University of Rome

Lecture Title: "School Chains, Decentralization, and Education Standards"

Suggested Readings:

Apr. 17: David Figlio

Gordon Fyfe Professor of Economics and Education, University of Rochester

Lecture Title: "Rules versus Discretion in the Use of Educational Testing"

Suggested Readings:

  • TBA
 
Follow us: FacebookFacebook TwitterNews Twitter TwitterResearch Twitter