The Potential Educational Benefits of Diversity
Amy Stuart Wells is a Professor of Sociology and Education and the co-director of “The Public Good,” a non-profit Public School Support Organization (PSSO) committed to sustaining diverse schools and communities and the Center for Understanding Race and Education (CURE) at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research and writing has focused broadly on issues of race and education and more specifically on educational policies such as school desegregation, school choice, charter schools, and tracking and how they shape and constrain opportunities for students of color. Her most recent research project, “Metro Migrations, Racial Segregation and School Boundaries,” examines urban and suburban demographic change and the role that public schools and their boundaries play in who moves where. From 2009–2011 Wells was the Director of the Building Knowledge for Social Justice Project (2009–2011) at the Ford Foundation. From 1999– 2006, she was the principal investigator of a five-year study of adults who attended racially mixed high schools funded by the Spencer, Joyce and Ford Foundations.
She is the author and co-author of multiple books, academic articles, and book chapters, including Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation’s Graduates, and most recently, “Longing for Milliken: Why Rodriguez Would Have Been Good but Not Enough” (in Rodriguez at 40: Exploring New Paths to Equal Educational Opportunity, edited by K. J. Robinson and C. Ogletree. She is a member of the National Academy of Education (2014 inductee), a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2013), 2007–2008 Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; a 2001–2002 Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's Scholars Program; the 2000 Julius & Rosa Sachs Lecturer, Teachers College-Columbia University; and the 2000 AERA Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. In 1999-2000 she was a Russell Sage Visiting Scholar. In 1995–1996 she was a National Academy of Education-Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral fellow, and 1990–1991 she was a Spencer Dissertation Fellow.
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She is the author and co-author of multiple books, academic articles, and book chapters, including Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation’s Graduates, and most recently, “Longing for Milliken: Why Rodriguez Would Have Been Good but Not Enough” (in Rodriguez at 40: Exploring New Paths to Equal Educational Opportunity, edited by K. J. Robinson and C. Ogletree. She is a member of the National Academy of Education (2014 inductee), a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2013), 2007–2008 Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; a 2001–2002 Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's Scholars Program; the 2000 Julius & Rosa Sachs Lecturer, Teachers College-Columbia University; and the 2000 AERA Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. In 1999-2000 she was a Russell Sage Visiting Scholar. In 1995–1996 she was a National Academy of Education-Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral fellow, and 1990–1991 she was a Spencer Dissertation Fellow.
View Ed-Talk Factsheet here.