Janelle Scott to Serve as President of the American Educational Research Association

Janelle Scott, professor and the Birgeneau Distinguished Chair in Educational Disparities in the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, has been voted president-elect of the American Educational Research Association. Professor Scott joins the AERA Council in 2023–2024 as president-elect. Her presidency begins at the conclusion of the association’s 2024 annual meeting.

Professor Scott is a former elementary school teacher. She conducts research on the politics of educational policy in a multiracial, segregated, and unequal society. She specifically examines how school choice policies, privatization, and philanthropy affect democratic accountability and equity in public education.

Dr. Scott is the co-author of The Politics of Education Policy in an Era of Inequality: Possibilities for Democratic Schooling (Routledge, 2018). She is the editor of School Choice and Diversity: What the Evidence Says (Teachers College Press, 2005) and co-editor of Racialization and Educational Inequality in Global Perspective (Routledge, 2023).

Professor Scott is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in political science. She earned a Ph.D. in education policy from the University of California, Los Angeles.