Michael J. Petrilli Amber M. Northern, Ph.D. David Griffith Josh Boots
6.12.2019

On this week’s podcast, Josh Boots, Founder and Executive Director of EmpowerK12, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss how high-performing schools use all sorts of data—and not just test scores—to improve their instruction and outcomes. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines recent increases in college completion rates.

Amber's Research Minute

Jeffrey T. Denning, Eric R. Eide, and Merrill Warnick, “Why Have College Completion Rates Increased?” Annenberg Center at Brown University, EdWorkingPapers (June 2019).

Mike Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, executive editor of Education Next, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Education Commission of the States. An award-winning writer, he…

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Amber Northern is senior vice president for research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where she supervises the Institute’s studies and research staff.  She has published in the areas of educational accountability, principal leadership, teacher quality, and academic standards, among others. Prior to joining Fordham, she served as senior study director at Westat. In that role, she provided evaluation services…

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David Griffith is a senior research and policy associate at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he helps manage a variety of projects in Fordham’s research pipeline. A native of Portland, Oregon, David holds a bachelor’s degree in politics and philosophy from Pomona College and a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University. Prior to joining Fordham, he worked as a staffer for Congressman Earl Blumenauer…

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Josh is the Founder and Executive Director of EmpowerK12. Prior to starting EmpowerK12, Josh served in a variety of education roles in DC over the last 16 years, including teaching 7th grade math in a DC Public School, leading the KIPP DC data team as their first Data Director, and contributing as a member of OSSE’s Assessment & Accountability team. He serves on multiple school accountability system task forces, leads the EdFuel Data Professional Learning Community, and is appointed to the DC State Board of Education ESSA Taskforce. He consults for multiple charter LEAs on their integrated data systems, strategic data-driven plans, and coaches school and data leaders. Josh has also consulted with MySchoolDC, the District’s common lottery system, during it’s first implementation year, running and auditing the lottery matching algorithm.

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