The Achievement Gap Initiative

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AGI Staff and Students

The Achievement Gap Initiative (AGI) is a university-wide effort initiated by the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to focus academic research, public education, and innovative outreach activities toward eliminating achievement gaps. A talented and dedicated team of AGI researchers, staff and students are engaged in the work of the AGI.

Ronald Ferguson AGI Director	Ronald F. Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is also an economist and Senior Research Associate at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. He has taught at Harvard since 1983, focusing on education and economic development. His research and writing for the past decade have focused on racial achievement gaps, appearing in a variety of publications. His most recent book is Toward Excellence with Equity: An emerging vision for closing the achievement gap, published by Harvard Education Press. He is the creator of the Tripod Project for School Improvement and also the faculty co-chair and director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. Ferguson earned an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and Ph.D. from MIT, both in economics. He is the father of two and very happily married to Helen Mont-Ferguson.
Ann Ballantine Consultant	Ann has over thirty years of experience in consulting and management roles including finance, strategic planning, communications, and technology. She has directed and contributed to diverse projects including research, strategic planning, and communications. She holds an M.B.A. in finance from New York University’s Stern School, an M.A. in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. cum laude in History from Boston University.
Felicia Cote Research Assistant	Felicia is conducting a review of evidence on school finance equity. She is evaluating the current state of inequity between states, within states, and within districts in terms of finance as well as other resources such as teachers and technology. She received her B.A. in public policy from Stanford University with a concentration in education, and is currently working towards her J.D. at Harvard University. Prior to joining AGI, she was a Teach for America Corps Member in the Bay Area. She taught Algebra, Geometry and Algebra II to high school students in San Jose.
Jocelyn Friedlander Research Assistant	Jocelyn works on a number of AGI projects. She recently received an Ed.M. in the Prevention Science and Practice program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to getting her master’s, Jocelyn worked at Columbia University’s National Center for Children and Families where she focused on early childhood policy issues at the state and federal levels. Jocelyn holds a bachelor of arts in psychology from Yale University.
Nathan Fosse Research Associate	As a Research Associate at the AGI, Nathan focuses on two projects using data from the Tripod Project. The first project focuses on the contextual and individual predictors of "acting white," providing one of the first comprehensive empirical tests of the "oppositional culture" thesis. The second project, in collaboration with Cambridge Education and with Stephen Raudenbush at the University of Chicago, focuses on measuring classroom quality using multilevel statistical modeling. Nathan is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Harvard University, where he is also an affiliate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences (IQSS) and a doctoral Fellow in the Multi-disciplinary Program in Social Policy and Inequality. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Psychology from Kansas State University, where he conducted research on the effect of trust on team problem-solving, winning honors at the Sigma Xi student research conference. His dissertation focuses on socioeconomic disparities in adolescent sexual risk-taking, using a qualitative and quantitative panel survey. He has also published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the journal Pediatrics, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Sara Lamback Research Assistant	As a Research Assistant at the AGI, Sara works primarily on the Conspiracy to Succeed and Pathways to Prosperity projects. She has over five years of experience as an educator and has taught a variety of subjects at the middle school level as well as undergraduate French. Sara recently completed an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She also holds an M.A. in French Literature from Middlebury College and a B.A. in Political Science and French from Wake Forest University.