Karen Hunter Quartz Adjunct Professor, UCLA

Karen Hunter Quartz is an adjunct professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and research director of the UCLA Community Schools Initiative.  Her research, teaching, and writing focus on new school development; the struggle to recruit, prepare, and retain good urban teachers; the measurement of effective teaching; and the use of data and research to improve practice in schools.  Her recent publications have appeared in journals such as Teachers College Record; Equity and Excellence in Education; and the Journal of Educational Change.  Her co-authored book, Becoming Good American Schools, received the Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association (Oakes, Quartz, Ryan, and Lipton, 2000) and her article “Too Angry to Leave” received an outstanding writing award from the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. In 2007, Dr. Quartz led the design team to create the UCLA Community School, a K-12 university-supported neighborhood public school.  She is currently working on an effort to design a second UCLA Community School site.  Her role as the schools’ research director involves supporting several research-practice partnerships on topics that include dual language learning, teacher evaluation, alternative assessment, learning through internships, technology integration, and college access and persistence.