Researcher joins Policy and Programs
Noted EL expert will focus on closing achievement gaps
Published: April 1, 2013
Julie Maxwell-Jolly, Ph.D., an education policy expert whose career has focused largely on English learners, has joined CSBA’s Policy and Programs Department.
As a senior education researcher and managing director of the Center for Applied Policy in Education (CAP-Ed) in the UC Davis School of Education, Maxwell-Jolly specialized in working to improve education outcomes for underserved and underperforming students. Her work at CAP-Ed focused on district and school leadership for closing achievement gaps, and included collaborations with a number of other universities and organizations. She has written and contributed to articles and books with a particular focus on improving outcomes for underserved students.
Maxwell-Jolly began her career in the classroom as a bilingual education teacher, and she’s been an education lecturer, supervisor of student teachers, education consultant and researcher. Her latest research at UC Davis examined the needs of English learners from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. In addition, while at CAP-Ed she collaborated with her colleagues to design and implement a popular seminar series for superintendents to help them increase district focus on teaching and learning.
Maxwell-Jolly earned a doctorate in education policy from UC Davis, a master’s degree in bilingual cross-cultural education from California State University, Sacramento; and a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley. She also earned teaching credentials from CSU East Bay.
She says her move to CSBA was based on her beliefs about how to facilitate changes that result in improved student achievement. Following her early classroom experience she spent a number of years focusing on state and federal policy issues, and more recently worked with district superintendents and conducted research in a district context.
“Over the last few years I’ve become more and more convinced that what happens at the district level—district leadership—and how education policy gets implemented on the ground—what districts do with it —is critical to making the kind of changes that lead to improvements in a range of outcomes for all students,” Maxwell-Jolly explained.