Lora Cohen-Vogel, Ph.D.
The Frank A. Daniels Professor of Public Policy and Education | UNC-Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC, UNITED STATES
Robena and Walter E. Hussman, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Policy and Education Reform
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Biography
With a focus on domestic education policy, Lora Cohen-Vogel is interested in identifying the programs and practices that are successfully raising schooling outcomes for traditionally underperforming students in the United States.
Cohen-Vogel is currently a co-principal investigator of the Early Learning Project at UNC-Chapel Hill, a $4 million grant from the Institute of Education Sciences. In that project, she leads a team that is examining how policy coherence (or lack thereof) may mediate the effect of high quality PreK experiences on children's later life outcomes.
Through 2015, Cohen-Vogel was co-principal investigator of the five-year, $13.5 million National Center for Research and Development on Scaling Up Effective Schools, a research-practice partnership between UNC, Vanderbilt University, Florida State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Education Development Center, and two of the nation's largest school districts.
Through her work with the Center, Cohen-Vogel developed an interest and expertise in continuous improvement research. Today, she writes and speaks widely on the topic and the potential she believes it holds for system improvement.
Articles by Cohen-Vogel have been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the American Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, and Educational Administration Quarterly, among others.
Leading the Division of Education Policy and Politics (Division L), Cohen-Vogel is a Vice President of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association. She has also served as President of the Politics of Education Association. She is on the editorial board of Educational Researcher.
Industry Expertise (6)
Education/Learning
Research
Public Policy
Program Development
Writing and Editing
Public Relations and Communications
Areas of Expertise (2)
Federal role in education
Politics of education
Accomplishments (1)
David Colton Award (professional)
2010-01-01
David Colton Award, Politics of Education Association (2010)
Education (1)
Colgate University: B.A., Psychology 1992
Major: Psychology. Minor: Education
Affiliations (4)
- University Council on Educational Administration
- Politics of Education Association
- Association for Education Finance and Policy
- American Educational Research Association
Links (1)
Media Appearances (1)
School of Education dean candidate schools crowd on why he should be dean
Daily Tar Heel online
2016-02-08
Lora Cohen-Vogel, a professor in the School of Education, said it strikes her that schools of education are in the space where enrollments are declining. But if she had the funding, she said she could admit three times the number of graduate students currently enrolled...
Research Grants (1)
Development Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools
Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
2012-01-01
Co-Principal Investigator
Articles (5)
Understanding Effective High Schools Evidence for Personalization for Academic and Social Emotional Learning
American Educational Research Journal
2015 This article presents findings from a year-long multilevel comparative case study exploring the characteristics of effective urban high schools. We developed a comprehensive framework from the school effectiveness research that guided our data collection and analysis at the four high schools. Using value-added methodology, we identified two higher and two lower performing high schools in Broward County, Florida. We found that the two higher performing high schools in the study had strong and deliberate ...
Evidence-Based Staffing: Using Student Achievement Data in Teacher Hiring and Assignment
The Golden Age of Evidence-Based Policy, 2015 Fall Conference
2015 Under pressure to meet educational benchmarks set by state and federal governments, school leaders have begun to rethink the ways they allocate their resources. In this context, school administrators are teaching to the test, working to align curricula and materials to the content and format of state tests (eg, Diamond & Spillane, 2004; Firestone, Monfils & Schorr, 2004; Lyons & Algozzine, 2006). They are also scheduling to the test by reducing time allocated for lunch, recess, and some untested subjects...
The Common Core State Standards initiative: An event history analysis of state adoption
American Journal of Education
2015 Today, with states' near-universal adoption of the Common Core State Standards, the political system has achieved that which was not possible less than 2 decades ago. Just why this is so remains unanswered. Some observers have attributed states' embrace of the standards to the substantial financial incentives that the federal government embedded in its $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative. Despite these perceptions, little is known about states' adoption and the degree to which federal incentivization conditioned their ...
Understanding Local Instructional Responses to Federal and State Accountability Mandates: A Typology of Extended Learning Time
Peabody journal of Education
2015 For the past dozen years, the federal government has held schools accountable for students' achievement in reading and mathematics. Schools that have not demonstrated improved student scores have faced heavy sanctions, including reconstitution and closure. In response to this high-stakes environment, schools appear to have extended the time students spend in instruction in various ways. In this article, the authors develop a typology of the programs and reforms that extend instruction along three dimensions: time, target, ...
Implementing educational innovations at scale transforming researchers into continuous improvement scientists
Education Policy
2014 There is growing concern among researchers and governmental officials that knowing what works in education is important, but not enough for school improvement. Sound evidence alone is not sufficient for large-scale, sustainable change, both because practitioners may consider it irrelevant to their own problems of practice or run into challenges when they try to implement. Failed attempts at replicating positive outcomes in new (or simply expanded) settings underscore the need for a different relationship ...
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