Kavita Kapadia Matsko, Principal Investigator
Kavita Kapadia Matsko is associate dean for teacher preparation and associate professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy. She has worked in the field of education in the Chicagoland area for over twenty years as teacher, mentor, teacher educator, residency director, and researcher. Her research interests focus on the study and design of teacher preparation programs with a particular focus on features of preparation related to the clinical experience, including cooperating teachers, and their relationship to candidate perceptions of preparation, instructional quality, and early years of teaching.
Matthew Ronfeldt, Co-Principal Investigator
Matt Ronfeldt is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Education. He seeks to understand how to improve teaching quality, particularly in schools and districts that serve marginalized students. Ronfeldt is primarily interested in whether and how pre-service teacher education and school/district factors, especially working conditions, are related to the employment, instructional quality, and retention of teachers. Ronfeldt previously taught middle school mathematics and science for seven years.
Michelle Reininger
Michelle Reininger is currently at the University of Colorado at Boulder. During the project, she was an Assistant Professor (Research) at Standard University and co-directed the IES-funded Stanford Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Program in Quantitative Education Policy Analysis. A former chemistry teacher, Reininger received her PhD in the economics of education and an MA in economics from Stanford University and an MA in education policy from the University of Virginia. Her research has focused largely on the dynamics of teacher labor markets including preparation, recruitment, and retention.
Hillary Greene Nolan
Hillary Greene Nolan is an Education Researcher at Digital Promise. She completed her PhD at the University of Michigan in Teaching and Teacher Education, where her research focused on teacher preparation and relational teaching practices. Hillary also taught middle school humanities for six years.
Research Analysts, Consortium on School Research, University of Chicago
Several former analysts with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research were involved with the project. Jennifer Cowhy and David Stevens were part of the initial team and assisted with the initial design of the project. Joshua Klugman was deeply engaged with survey and measure development, with consultation from Stuart Luppescu and Julia Gwynne. Molly Gordon and Jennie Jiang took the lead in summarizing key findings from our research and writing the policy brief, with support from their communications team including Bronwyn McDaniel and Jessica Tansey.