Joan Baratz-Snowden

Joan Baratz-Snowden is president of the Education Study Center an organization devoted to helping organizations and institutions develop policies and implement practices that improve the equal educational opportunities of poor and minority students.

Prior to directing the Education Study Center, she was the Director of the Educational Issues Department of the American Federation of Teachers, where she managed a staff of 35 and a multimillion dollar budget and was responsible for moving professional issues in the field and helping affiliates understand the complexity of education reform and the roles that the union can play in improving schools and student achievement.

Prior to her work at the AFT, Baratz-Snowden was Vice President for Education Policy and Reform at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). Before joining NBPTS, she worked at the Educational Testing Service as the Director of the Policy Information Center. In that position, she was responsible for disseminating research findings on policy related matters to a broad audience of researchers and policy makers.

Dr. Baratz-Snowden is well known for directing and conducting policy studies in the politics of testing and evaluation and teacher quality. She directed the Education Policy Research Institute program on testing which focused on the sociopolitical environment in which assessment data are generated and used. Her research examined issues of impact and use of standardized testing in schools, colleges and universities and in entrance to teaching and other professions.

Dr. Baratz-Snowden is not only an expert in minority education policy, but also is well known for her early research on the language and cultural differences of Black children. In the 1960's she championed the notion of cultural differences and challenged the then popular perception that the behavior of Black Americans was defective and pathological because of economic and/or environmental misfortune. Her research on equity issues includes the development of alternative models of equal educational opportunity that satisfy the constraints of the courts and existing federal legislation.