Gail L. Sunderman

Gail L. Sunderman is a Research Associate in K-12
Education for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University. Her research focuses on educational policy and
politics, and urban school reform, including the development
and implementation of education policy and the impact of
policy on the educational opportunities for at-risk
students. At the Civil Rights Project, she is involved in a
five-year study examining the implementation of the No Child
Left Behind Act of 2001. Prior research includes studies on
the implementation of Title I schoolwide programs,
governance reform in the Chicago Public Schools, and
understanding institutional and organizational constraints
on implementing school reform initiatives. Her work has
appeared in Educational Policy, Administration Quarterly,
and the Peabody Journal of Education.
Before joining the Civil Rights Project she was a
researcher for the American Institutes for Research and the
Center for the Social Organization of Schools at Johns
Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. in political
science and M.A. in International Relations from the
University of Chicago.