He is also the Associate Director of the inter-disciplinary Public Policy Ph.D. program and the Director of the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas. His research interests include program evaluation, standards-based and accountability-based school reform, racial segregation in schools, the impact of pre-school care on school readiness, and school finance. He earned a Ph.D. in Education Policy in 2000 from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.