CAROL ASCHER

Carol Ascher is an anthropologist (Ph.D., Columbia University), whose research focus has been issues of educational equity, including desegregation, school finance, and improving schools serving low-income children of color.  Her current position is a senior research scientist at the Institute for Education and Social Policy of the  New York University.  Her two-year analysis for New York State's Department of Education•s process for identifying and improving its lowest-performing schools, commonly known as SURR or Schools under Registration Review, resulted in Schools on Notice (1998) and Schools in Context (1999).

For the past three years, Ms. Ascher has also been directing a cluster of projects aimed at understanding the emerging charter school movement.  V These include a national analysis of charter school access and a four-state study of the relationship between standards-based reform and charter schools.  A three-year study, Going Charter, is following the charter school start-up and conversion process and comparing the effects of charter status in New York city on autonomy, finance, accountability and school supports.  In addition, she is beginning a three-year national investigation of the opportunity to learn in charter schools.

Ms. Ascher is co-author with Norm Fruchter and Bob Berne of Public Schools and Privatization (Twentieth Century Fund, 1996), and the author of the novel, The Flood: A Novel (Curbstone, 1997) which depicts the beginning of the Brown V. Board of Education lawsuit in 1951 in Topeka Kansas.

Institute for Education and Social Policy
NYU
726 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY  10003 
Tel.: 212.998.5880
Fax: 212.995.4564