Rachel White

As a scholar of education leadership and policy, I am dedicated to illuminating the intricacies of education policymaking and implementation processes and the impacts – both intended and unintended – that policy decisions and actions made by local and state leaders have on students, parents, educators, and broader society. Exploiting the power that mixed methods research can bring to the analysis of complex education issues, my research integrates sophisticated quantitative and qualitative methods to explore how institutions, politics, and organizational structures influence state and local education policymaking and implementation processes. In particular, my research agenda is framed by three areas of interest: 1) issues of power, voice and democratic accountability in the education policymaking process, 2) relationships between institutional structures and education policymaking and implementation, and 3) how school leaders come to understand and implement policy in ways that lead to the enactment of social justice for historically marginalized student populations. In what follows, I highlight recent and ongoing work in these areas.

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the K-12 Educational Leadership Program in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. I teach courses such as education policy & politics and advanced research design and analysis.

I served as an assistant professor of K-12 educational leadership at Old Dominion University, as well as a postdoctoral scholar/research associate at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education funded through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I worked with Dr. Morgan Polikoff to explore how curriculum decisions -- one of the most loacalized policy decisions -- made by school leaders and teachers impact students and teachers.

I hold a PhD in Education Policy from Michigan State University's College of Education, an MA in Education Policy & Leadership from The Ohio State University's College of Education and Human Ecology, and a BA in Public Policy from The University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.