Douglas Harris

Douglas Harris is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics, the Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education, Director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (ERA-New Orleans), and Director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), all at Tulane University. His research has influenced policy and practice on test-based accountability for teachers and schools, value-added measures, charter schools and market-based reforms, and college financial aid and access programs. At ERA-New Orleans, he is studying the city’s unprecedented almost-all-charter system.  The new REACH center, funded through $10 million from the USDOE Institute of Education Sciences (IES), is taking this work to a national scale and covering a broader array of school choice policies. He is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, which recently released result from his IES-funded randomized trial of a “promise scholarship,” or free college, program in Milwaukee. Value-Added Measures in Education (Harvard Education Press, 2011), his first book, was nominated for the national Grawemeyer prize in education and praised by national leaders across the political spectrum, including Randi Weingarten and Bill Gates. He work has been published in top journals in a variety of fields, including the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Economics of Education Review, American Sociological Review, and the general interest journal, Science. He advised has advised governors in six states, testified in the U.S. Senate, and advised the U.S. Department of Education and Obama White House on multiple education policies. His work is also widely cited in national media, including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, the Washington Post, National Journal, and The Wall Street Journal and commentators such as David Brooks and Malcolm Gladwell.