Evaluation Team

Gary Miron
Christopher Nelson
John Risley

This project is directed by Dr. Gary Miron, Principal Research Associate in The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University.  In this role, he provides the leadership for the evaluation team and is responsible for the conduct of the project and fulfilling the operational and programmatic expectations of the project.  He serves as the primary liaison/point of contact for this project.

Dr.  Miron has directed or served as project manager for evaluations of charter schools in Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, and the city of Cleveland, Ohio..  He has been involved in the development of research instruments, data collection and analysis, and report writing.  In Connecticut and Cleveland, he has also provided technical assistance for the charter schools in terms of helping them develop and implement self-evaluations and demonstrate their success.

Dr. Miron has a diverse background as a teacher and researcher.  He worked as a public school teacher in Michigan in the mid-1980s and taught at the university level in China and in Sweden.  Between 1987 and 1997, he was employed at Stockholm University.  Here he completed his doctoral degree and later worked as a staff researcher and as the Director of Studies.  During the time he was employed at Stockholm University, he served as prinicpal investigator for several international and national research and evaluation projects dealing with educational questions.

Relevant to the current study, Dr. Miron planned and directed a study of school restructuring in Europe (1994-1997) and conducted an investigation for the Swedish National Agency for Education of reforms in Sweden concerning decentralization, choice, and the use of market forces as a means to restructure the education system (1992-1993).  In addition to his research on school reforms, he was involved with starting a charter-like “independent” Montessori school in Sweden.  This experience helped him to understand the voucher reform in Sweden from the perspective of a school administrator.

Dr. Miron's research and diverse international work experience have provided him with the opportunity to study and learn about educational systems and educational problems in several regions of the world.  He has taught research methods and is familiar with employing a broad range of research methods and techniques.  He has researched and written on such topics as special needs education, educational evaluation, educational planning and policy, the strengthening of research capacity, multimethod research, restructuring of education, and school reform.  He has authored or edited 8 books and monographs and has published numerous articles and chapters in books. Titles relevant to this evaluation include What’s Public About Charter Schools?  Lessons Learned About Choice and Accountability (2002); Restructuring Education in Europe: Country Reports from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany and Sweden (1997); Choice and the Use of Market Forces in Schooling: Swedish Education Reforms for the 1990s (1993); Toward Free Choice and Market-Oriented Schools: Problems and Promises (1993); Evaluating Educational Programmes and Projects: Holistic and Practical Considerations (1990); “Choice and the quasi-market in Swedish education,” Oxford Studies in Comparative Education (1996); “Student Academic Achievement in Charter Schools: What We Know and Why We Know So Little.” Occasional Paper No. 41. NCSPE, Teachers College, Columbia University (2001).

[back to top]

Dr. Christopher Nelson, Senior Research Associate at The Evaluation Center.  Nelson has worked on both the initial study of Pennsylvania charter schools (2000) as well as the five year legislatively mandated evaluation.   He has also worked on evaluations of charter schools in Illinois, Michigan, and the city of Cleveland.  He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science and public policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota. 

Dr. Nelson has studied a number of policy reforms, including charter schools.  He has participated in the development of region-wide and district-level accountability systems and systems designed to facilitate data-based decision making in charter and traditional public schools. Dr. Nelson has also studied the impact of changes in governance and regulatory structures on public organizations, work that he is in the process of extending to charter schools.  This work will be very useful in assessing the impact of waivers from educational regulations on charter and traditional public schools. Finally, Dr. Nelson brings a knowledge of the dynamics of innovation diffusion in a variety of policy areas to the study of charter schools.  This latter body of research will be particularly useful in assessing the conditions under which traditional public schools are likely to adopt and implement innovations developed in charter schools. 

Dr. Nelson brings a rich diversity of methodological skills to program evaluation, both quantitative and qualitative. As a qualitative researcher he has conducted focus groups, in-depth interviews, and has constructed policy histories in the evaluation of public programs.  His experience with quantitative evaluation methods includes large and small survey samples, survey instrument design, the design and development of databases, coding of documents into quantitative indicators, and a variety of elementary and advanced statistical techniques.  Moreover, he is particularly adept at blending qualitative and quantitative methods into evaluation designs that best address a given evaluation problem. 

[back to top]

John Risley has been a research assistant at the Evaluation Center since August 2001.  Since that time, he has been serving as project manager for the Pennsylvania evaluation and has been extensively involved in the the field research, conducting site visits to 50 of the 78 operating charter schools in 2002.  Mr. Risley holds a master's degree in political science from The American University and a bachelor's degree in political science from The Pennsylvania State University.  He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Western Michigan University.   Prior to joining the Center he worked for three years as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies and other health care organizations. He developed a broad knowledge of state and local health policy concerning areas such as Medicaid and the children's health insurance program.

[back to top]