The Center for Public Policy and Administration will celebrate two authors at a reception in the Gordon Hall Atrium on Thursday, October 27, from 4-5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Kathryn McDermott (education and public policy) will discuss her new book, High Stakes Reform: The Politics of Educational Accountability, and Brenda Bushouse (political science and public policy) will speak about her recent book, Universal Preschool: Policy Change, Stability, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, for which she has been awarded the 2011 Virginia Hodgkinson Research Prize.
McDermott’s book, which was published in September by Georgetown University Press, examines the relationship between important political and historic events and the current trend in education policy reform of performance accountability in public schools.
McDermott’s research focuses on the formation and implementation of state-level education policy and the effects of policy on educational equity. In 2001, she led a statewide study of Massachusetts’ capacity to implement the Education Reform Act of 1993, and also has examined the role of policy in providing access to higher education in New England. She is the author of Controlling Public Education: Localism Versus Equity, which critiques the current American system of local control of public schools.
Bushouse’s book explores the reasons why it recently became politically advantageous for state legislators to support universal access to preschool programs and how political and budgetary stability was achieved to spur this initiative. The Hodgkinson prize recognizes the pioneering role of Virginia Hodgkinson in research on philanthropy and nonprofit organizations. She also was instrumental in developing many of the important institutions and organizations supporting research on philanthropy, volunteering and nonprofit organizations and was a mentor to many scholars and policymakers in the field.
Professor Bushouse conducts research on the role of nonprofits in the U.S. and is an expert on the national universal preschool movement. She is a past recipient of an Ian Axford Fellowship in Public Policy (New Zealand) and has served as a researcher for Zero to Three, a national nonprofit that advocates for infants and toddlers. Her current research is on governance issues and how they impact nonprofit accountability, effectiveness, and decision-making in nonprofits. Prior to coming to UMass, she worked in economic development for both local and federal government.
Contact:
Susan Newton
Extension 7-0478
snewton@pubpol.umass.edu
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Gordon Hall
418 North Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01002-1735
Tel: 413.545.3940
Fax: 413.545.1108
www.masspolicy.org