Jeannie Oakes

Jeannie Oakes is Presidential Professor Emeritus in Educational Equity at UCLA, where she founded UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access; the University of California’s All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity; and Center X, UCLA’s urban teacher preparation program. She is also Senior Fellow in Residence at the Learning Policy Institute. In 2014, she completed a 6-year term at the Ford Foundation as Director of Educational Opportunity and Scholarship programs worldwide. Oakes’ scholarship examines the effect of social policies on the education of low-income students of color, and it investigates equity-minded reform. Oakes’ books include Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (first edition published in 1985 and second edition in 2005), Becoming Good American Schools: The Struggle for Civic Virtue in Education Reform (with UCLA colleagues), and Learning Power (with UCLA colleagues). She has received four major awards from the American Educational Research Association (Early Career, Outstanding Research Article, Outstanding Book, and Social Justice in Education Research), and holds the Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Education Research Association; the Multicultural Research Award from the National Association for Multicultural Education, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Educational Press Association of America, the World Cultural Council’s Jose Vasconcelos Award in Education, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Ralph David Abernathy Award for Public Service. Oakes is Past President of AERA and presided over the Association during its 2016 Centennial Year.