Michael Gottfried, with Gilberto Conchas of UC Irvine, has co-edited When School Policies Backfire: How Well-Intended Measures Can Harm Our Most Vulnerable Students (Harvard Education Press, 2016).
The book focuses on failed attempts to reform education policies to benefit disadvantaged students—and how these same attempts actually made the problems worse. The book follows case studies about education reform, and examines where each story went wrong and emphasizes how policy makers and researchers should prioritize vulnerable students when making decisions. Contributing authors include two of Dr. Gottfried’s doctoral students at UCSB – Cameron Sublett and Lia Simon – as well as researchers and faculty from RAND, Colorado University Boulder, University of Connecticut, Johns Hopkins University, SRI International, San Francisco State University, Seton Hall University, and UC Irvine.
“Highly readable, and rich with diverse examples, this terrific volume fills a gap in the literature on policy implementation in education,” says Dominic Brewer, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. “Gottfried and Conchas have assembled a fascinating set of thought-provoking case studies, and succeed in teasing out some important lessons.”
Michael Gottfried is an associate professor in the Department of Education at the Gevirtz School at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Gottfried’s research focuses on the economics of education and education policy. Using the analytic tools from these disciplines, he has examined issues pertaining to peer effects, classroom context, and STEM. Dr. Gottfried has published numerous articles in these areas and won multiple scholarly awards for his research, including the AERA’s Outstanding Publication in Methodology Award (2010 and 2012) and the Highest Reviewed Paper Award (2013). He previously co-edited Inequality, Power and School Success: Case Studies on Racial Disparity and Opportunity in Education, also with Gilberto Conchas.