LEADERSHIP AND STAFF
Josephine Bias Robinson is the executive director of the DC Education Research Collaborative, a new research-practice partnership housed at the Urban Institute. The Collaborative is authorized by the District of Columbia government to provide actionable, independent research to support improvement in the District’s public schools.
Previously, she served as the chief of family and public engagement for the District of Columbia Public Schools, where she helped launch the Empowering Males of Color Initiative and helped open Ron Brown College Preparatory High School, the District’s first all-male public high school. As chief, she also codesigned and facilitated numerous citywide engagement processes, designed to give those most affected input into critical issues, such as school closures and boundary revisions.
Bias Robinson’s expertise is community-engaged participatory practices, bringing those who make policy anddecisions closer to the people they serve. A District resident for more than 30 years, her three children graduated from District of Columbia schools, and her grandsons attend DC Public Schools. She has held presidential appointments in the White House and the US Department of Health and Human Services, executive leadership roles at the HSC Health Care System and the United Way Worldwide, and formerly led the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.
Bias Robinson has a BS in international affairs and politics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Dara Zeehandelaar Shaw is the research director for the DC Education Research Collaborative, where she oversees and manages the execution of the collaborative’s research agenda. Previously, she was the founder and executive director of the Office of Research and Strategic Data Use at the Maryland State Department of Education, where she led the department’s research and evaluation work, designed and executed the agency’s research agenda, and promoted a data-driven culture throughout the agency and the state. She also worked as the national research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, DC–based education policy think tank. She started her career in education as a high school mathematics teacher for District of Columbia Public Schools.
Shaw holds a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from Cornell University and a master’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Maryland. She earned her doctoral degree in urban education policy with a concentration in quantitative methodology from the University of Southern California.
Shaw currently cochairs the policymakers and practitioners community group of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) and is a former AEFP board member. She also sits on the board of a DC charter school.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
The Advisory Committee—which determines the Collaborative's research agenda and is made up of the people who will be affected by that research—consists of parents and students, teachers and principals, and representatives of DC public schools, DC government, and advocacy groups.
RESEARCH COUNCIL
The Research Council, which designs and conducts the research in partnership with the community, includes the following organizations:
- American University School of Education
- Bellwether
- Brookings Institution
- D.C. Policy Center
- EmpowerK12
- George Washington University
- Georgetown University
- Howard University School of Education
- Mathematica
- Trinity Washington University
- University of Maryland
- University of the District of Columbia
- University of Virginia’s EdPolicyWorks
- Youth Invest Partners
STATEMENT OF INDEPENDENCE
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the DC Education Research Collaborative or to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Funders do not determine research findings or the insights and recommendations of DC Education Research Collaborative experts or Urban Institute experts. Further information on Urban’s funding principles is available at http://urban.org/fundingprinciples .
