Amy Stuart Wells

Bank Street Graduate School of Education

Dean

Amy Stuart Wells is a Professor of Sociology and Education and the Director of the Center for Understanding Race and Education (CURE) at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research and writing has focused broadly on issues of race and education and more specifically on educational policies such as school desegregation, school choice, charter schools, and tracking and how they shape and constrain opportunities for students of color. Wells’ current research project, “Metro Migrations, Racial Segregation and School Boundaries,” examines urban and suburban demographic change over the last 10 years and the role that public schools and their boundaries play in who moves where. From 2009-2011 Wells was the Director of the Building Knowledge for Social Justice Project (2009-2011) at the Ford Foundation. From 1999-2006, she was the principal investigator of a five-year study of adults who attended racially mixed high schools funded by the Spencer, Joyce and Ford Foundations. She is the author and co-author of multiple books, academic articles and book chapters, including Both Sides Now: The Story of School Desegregation’s Graduates and most recently, “Longing for Milliken: Why Rodriguez Would Have Been Good but Not Enough.” In K. J. Robinson and C. Ogletree (Eds) Rodriguez at 40: Exploring New Paths to Equal Educational Opportunity. In addition, Wells began her career as a journalist and continues to write for the popular press. Wells is also the recipient of several honors and awards, including a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2013 inductee), 2007-2008 Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; a 2001-02 Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's Scholars Program; the 2000 Julius & Rosa Sachs Lecturer, Teachers College-Columbia University; and the 2000 AERA Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. In 1999-2000 she was a Russell Sage Visiting Scholar. In 1995-96 she was a National Academy of Education-Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral fellow, and 1990-91 she was a Spencer Dissertation Fellow.