Russell Rumberger

University of California, Santa Barbara

Professor Emeritus

Russell Rumberger is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Education at UC Santa Barbara. He has published widely in several areas of education: education and work; the schooling of disadvantaged students, particularly school dropouts and linguistic minority students; school effectiveness; and education policy. He has served on three committees of the National Research Council (NRC), including the Committee on Increasing High School Students' Engagement and Motivation to Learn that issued, Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students' Motivation to Learn (2003). He was a member on the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences panel that produced the Dropout Prevention Practice Guide (2008). He is author of the highly acclaimed book, Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of High School and What Can Be Done About It (Harvard University Press, 2011). His most recent publication is Inequality in Key Skills of City Youth: An international Comparison (edited with Stephen Lamb, American Educational Research Association, 2024). From 2010-12 he served as the Vice Provost for Education Partnerships, University of California Office of the President. From 2008-2015 he founded and directed the California Dropout Research Project, which produced a series of reports and policy briefs about the dropout problem in California and a state policy agenda to improve California's high school graduation rate. Professor Rumberger received a Ph.D. in Education and a M.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University. In 2013 he was made a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and received the Elizabeth G. Cohen Distinguished Career in Applied Sociology of Education Award, Sociology of Education SIG, American Educational Research Association.