Graduate Fellows

Joshua Beauregard

Josh Beauregard is a third-year doctoral student in the Education Policy, Leadership and Instructional Practice concentration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).  His research interests center on the economics of education including school choice and teacher labor markets and, more specifically, charter school design and alternative incentive programs for teachers.  In addition to his work with CEPR, he is an advisor for HGSE’s Teacher Education Program (TEP) and a teacher coach at a charter school in Boston.  Prior to embarking on his doctoral studies, Josh taught mathematics and economics for five years at Louis D. Brandeis High School in New York City.  He also taught economics and education courses at New York University and City College of New York (CCNY).  Before teaching, he worked in consulting at National Economic Research Associates.  Josh holds a B.A. in Economics from Vassar College and M.S. in Secondary Mathematics Education from CCNY.

Julia Bloom

Julia Bloom is a third-year doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her concentration is Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education, where she focuses on the effects of No Child Left Behind accountability policies on K-12 education. Her current research interests include teacher labor markets and the interplay between score inflation and school accountability pressures. Prior to returning to Harvard for her doctorate, she was a Statistician at the U.S Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, working specifically on issues related to measuring teacher compensation and teacher dismissals for the Schools and Staffing Survey. Julia has also worked as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education’s Strategic Accountability Service and as an Education Program Specialist at the Division of Special Education within the Maryland State Department of Education.  Julia holds a master’s degree in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from Duke University.

Angela Boatman

Angela Boatman is a fourth year doctoral student and research assistant at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she is studying the Economics of Higher Education.  Her research focuses on the evaluation of college access policies, particularly in the area of financial aid.  Other research has focused on state remediation policies and the link between state appropriations and tuition/ financial aid.  She previously worked as an intern for the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), researching state tuition, fees, and financial aid policies across the 50 states.  Angela has her B.A. from the University of Minnesota and holds an M.P.P from the Ford School of Public Policy and an M.A. from the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, both from the University of Michigan.

Katie Buckley

Katie Buckley is a second-year doctoral student in the Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education concentration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the impact of federal and state policies, specifically teacher quality and school choice policies, on student outcomes. In addition to her work with CEPR, she is also a research associate for the Northeast and Islands Regional Education Laboratory located at the Education Development Center (EDC). Prior to working at EDC, Katie received her M.P.P. from the Georgetown University Institute for Public Policy. During that time, she worked on an evaluation of the Washington D.C. voucher program as well as at the National Center on Education and the Economy.  Katie holds a B.A. in Political Science from Providence College.

David Deming

David Deming is a fourth year doctoral student in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research focuses broadly on the economics of education and has appeared in the American Economic Journal, Applied Economics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. His dissertation studies the connection between schooling and criminal behavior. He holds an M.P.P .from Berkeley and a B.S. in economics and political science from The Ohio State University.

Matthew Kraft

Matt Kraft is a second-year doctoral student in the Quantitative Policy Analysis program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His primary areas of research are the economics of education and the measurement of teacher quality. Specifically, he is interested in the relationship between teacher salary structures/incentives and the teacher labor market as well as the creation of both qualitative and quantitative measures of teacher effectiveness. Before coming to Harvard, Matt taught middle school English in Oakland and integrated humanities at Berkeley High school where he co-founded and led Life Academy, a small 9th grade academic program for students at-risk of dropping out. Matt holds a B.A. in International Relations and a M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University.

David Liebowitz

David Liebowitz is a second year doctoral student in the Education Policy, Leadership and Instructional Practice concentration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  David taught middle school English for six years in Colorado after beginning his career as a content developer and marketing manager at two internet start-ups.  Since starting his graduate studies, David has worked to support classroom teachers in the Boston Public Schools and as a policy analyst at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education.  Concurrent with his doctoral work, David is pursuing principal licensure.  He hopes to marry his experiences in research, policy, and practice to promote more equitable and excellent systems of schools guided by evidence-based decisions.  David holds a B.A. in English Literature from Columbia University and an Ed.M. in Learning and Teaching from Harvard University.

John Papay

John Papay is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education concentration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Before entering graduate school, he taught high school history in Pennsylvania and worked as a health care policy research analyst in Washington, D.C. He currently serves as a Freshman Proctor and member of the Board of Freshman Advisers for Harvard College. Papay holds a B.A. in History from Haverford College and an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research interests include teacher policy, the economics of education, teacher labor markets, and teachers unions. He has recently been involved in a study of recently elected teacher union leaders with the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers.

Colin Taylor

Colin Taylor is a second-year masters student in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, concentrating in human resources, labor and education policies. He previously worked as a research assistant at the Urban Institute’s Education Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where he performed quantitative and qualitiative research on teacher effectiveness, school finance and college access. He holds a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Notre Dame.

Ellen Viruleg

Ellen Viruleg is a fifth-year doctoral student at HGSE, concentrating in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education.  She is interested in education program evaluation, large-scale urban school reform, and standardized testing.  Ellen graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in mathematics and went on to teach high school in Baltimore City for five years with Teach for America.  She also worked with the Baltimore City Public School System through The Fund for Educational Excellence, where she designed and led professional development for high school math teachers in the city and created new Algebra I and Geometry curricula for Baltimore. She earned her Masters in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University in 2002.  In addition to her work at CEPR, she has developed two math curriculum books for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Thomas Wei

Thomas Wei is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in Public Policy.  His research areas are labor economics and education policy - in particular, he wishes to take the economics lens and use it to shed empirical light on traditional psychological phenomenon in the realm of education.  An example of this is his recent work on exploiting a natural experiment to understand Stereotype Threat with regards to the gender achievement gap in mathematics.  He is also currently working on research that examines the impact of school grade structure on student outcomes, as well as the efficiency of job matches among high-skilled scientists.  Thomas received a B.S. from Cornell University in 2005 and spent some time working for the New York State Assembly in 2004.

Amy Wooten

Amy Wooten is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Education Policy, Leadership and Instructional Practice concentration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  She began her career as a teacher at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School in Kannapolis, NC where she taught second and fifth grades. She has also worked at the United States Department of Education in the Office of Innovation and Improvement on Teacher Quality Programs, served as a research assistant at the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards and the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education.  She graduated from Wake Forest University with a B.A. in History, and obtained a M.Ed. in Elementary Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a M.Ed. in Politics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University.  Her research interests include teacher professionalism, entrepreneurial leadership in education, and teachers unions.