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Three recipients each receive $25,000 to pursue research on the courts and K-12 education

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Washington's premier education think tank, is pleased to announce the inaugural winners of its new research grant program for promising young scholars, to be known as Fordham Scholars. This program funds doctoral candidates and junior faculty studying key issues in education.

This year's theme is "The Courts and K-12 Education." Following an exhaustive appraisal of dozens of proposals, Fordham selected three strong recipients, each of whom will receive a $25,000 grant to pursue a specific research project. They are: Nora Gordon of the University of California-San Diego, Daniel Nadler of Harvard University, and Jason Snyder of Columbia University's Teachers College. Their projects are outlined below.

"We had a strong pool of applicants, with many worthy contenders vying for these grants," said Chester E. Finn Jr., Fordham's President. "The three we selected display uncommonly interesting topics, strong methodological grasp, solid research credentials, thorough grasp of the subject matter and a robust commitment to high academic standards and intellectual rigor. We look forward to seeing the fruits of their analyses." 

The recipients will use their grant funds to support their research and submit papers to peer-reviewed journals.

Nora Gordon is assistant professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, and a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.  She is interested in how school districts respond to state and federal attempts to change their policies and practices through legislation, judicial intervention, and financial incentives.  In past work, she has pursued this research agenda through education policy applications including Title I, school district consolidation, state school finance equalizations, and school district desegregation.  Gordon received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 2002.  As a Fordham Scholar, she will investigate how states form their policies related to homeschooling, in particular, the extent to which these policies are shaped by demographics and litigation.  This is a critical first step in understanding the extent to which regulation of homeschooling causally impacts participation, and ultimately the extent to which participation in homeschooling affects student achievement.

Daniel Nadler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University and a Research Fellow at Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance. He has published on the subjects of constitutional law and judicial politics. Assisted by his Fordham Scholars grant, Nadler will investigate ideological influences in Federal court decisions that pertain to public education. He will use various methods to determine whether the growing body of education jurisprudence has developed consistently and in accord with precedent or whether it has been unduly subject to extra-legal partisan influences.

Jason Snyder is a teacher at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia and a doctoral candidate in education leadership at Columbia University Teachers College.  He has taught government and history for six years in public schools; he also taught for one year at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.  He previously practiced education and appellate law at Hogan & Hartson LLP, where he advised school districts and drafted briefs in appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.  Snyder earned a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, a M.Ed. from U.C.L.A., and an A.B., from Stanford.   His study will examine school administrators' views on their authority over student-discipline decisions.  Given that state and federal courts have increasingly deferred to school officials on discipline-related matters, the study intends to measure how well administrators understand the scope of their discretion and whether they embrace or shrink from the additional autonomy.

Applications for the 2009 round of Fordham Scholars awards will be invited early next year.

For further information, please contact Jeffrey Kuhner, Communications Director, at 202-223-1810.

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Nationally and in our home state of Ohio, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute strives to close America's vexing achievement gaps by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding high-quality education options for parents and families. For more information about the Institute's work, visit http://www.edexcellence.net.