Erica Frankenberg
Erica Frankenberg
Erica Frankenberg (Ed.D., Harvard University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies in the College of Education at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests focus on racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools, and the connections between school segregation and other metropolitan policies. She enjoys working with graduate students through research projects, and has published articles and chapters co-authored with students. At Penn State, Dr. Frankenberg teaches classes on education policy and politics.
Prior to joining the Penn State faculty, she was the research and policy director for the Initiative on School Integration at the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. Dr. Frankenberg is co-editor of Integrating Schools in a Changing Society: New Policies and Legal Options for a Multiracial Generation (with Elizabeth DeBray), from the University of North Carolina Press. She is also a co-editor of Lessons in Integration: Realizing the Promise of Racial Diversity in America’s Schools (with Gary Orfield), published by the University of Virginia Press (2007). Her work has also been published in education policy journals, law reviews, housing journals, and practitioner publications.
Dr. Frankenberg is currently involved in a study of suburban racial change, funded by the Spencer Foundation. This mixed-methods project examines the extent to which suburban districts are becoming more diverse, how they conceptualize of this change, and what responses districts and communities adopt. A book from the Harvard Education Press in Fall 2012, The Resegregation of Suburban Schools: A Hidden Crisis in American Education, will be the first publication from this project.
Another aspect of her work has examined how districts respond to the Supreme Court’s 2007 voluntary integration decision. One aspect of this work, funded by a Spencer Foundation small grant, examines the eleven school districts that received federal funding in 2009 to redesign their student assignment plans. This ongoing research, with Kathryn McDermott and Elizabeth DeBray, examines how school districts define diversity and what policies they adopt to pursue diversity.
Dr. Frankenberg’s research has examined how the design of school choice policy affects racial and economic student stratification. This has included examining the segregation trends in charter schools as well as analyzing state and federal policy to understand why such patterns of segregation exist in charter schools. She has co-authored (with Gary Orfield) a book to be published in spring 2013 on this topic, Educational Delusions? Why Choice Can Deepen Inequality and How to Make it Fair (from University of California Press).
In addition to her teaching and research, she is actively involved with Division L of the American Educational Research Association, including serving on annual meeting program committees and the affirmative action committee. In 2013, she will begin her service as Division L Secretary. Dr. Frankenberg is also involved with the National Coalition for School Diversity, including coordination of the group’s Research Advisory Panel.
