Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, Vanderbilt University
Jason Grissom is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. Professor Grissom’s research uses large data sets and draws on the perspectives of political science, public administration, and economics to study the governance of K-12 education, including both its management and political dimensions. He is particularly interested in identifying the impacts of school and district leaders on teacher and student outcomes and has published work on principal performance, school board decision-making, teachers’ unions and collective bargaining. He has also published a stream of articles on the implications of the race and gender composition of the public education workforce—and the public bureaucracy more generally—for the distribution of resources and outcomes. His work has appeared in such outlets as American Educational Research Journal, American Journal of Education, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Politics, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Administration Review, and Teachers College Record. Currently, Professor Grissom is principal investigator (with Susanna Loeb) on an Institute of Education Sciences-funded, longitudinal study of school leaders in four large, urban districts. The study combines administrative, survey, interview and observational data to dig deep into what makes school leaders effective and what districts do to identify and develop high-quality school leadership. He is also co-editor (with Carolyn Herrington) of the 2012 Politics of Education Association Yearbook, which examines intergovernmental relations in education.