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Social Sciences Division
Education Department
Assistant Professor
Faculty
Politics
School Reform and School Policy
Education
McHenry Library
McHenry 3165
Education Department
Ph.D. Education, University of California, Berkeley
M.A. Education, University of California, Berkeley
B.A. Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies and Spanish Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Political economy of urban education; education policy and politics; education governance; educational leadership; neoliberalism; critical theory; school choice policies (charter schools, portfolio strategy); race and democracy; urban district reform and community engagement; qualitative methods (interviews, participant observation, policy analysis, comparative case study design)
Dr. René Espinoza Kissell's research centers on the political economy of urban education, education policy and politics, and school district governance. She examines the relationship between public and private approaches to confronting enduring issues in race and class inequities, fiscal crisis, and public scrutiny over the purpose of schooling in the changing economy. Drawing on critical theories and qualitative methods, her work centers on two strands of research: 1) the evolution of school choice policy and community engagement, analyzing the racial politics from charter school reform to portfolio district governance, and 2) the role of audit agencies in the creation, management, and racialized surveillance of school district debt.
Hellman Fellow, UCSC, 2024
Faculty Research Grant, UCSC Committee on Research, 2024-2026
Sprout Grant, UCSC Institute for Social Transformation, 2024
Sprout Grant, UCSC Institute for Social Transformation, 2023
Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder, 2020-2022
Outstanding Dissertation Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division A: Educational Leadership, 2021
Outstanding Dissertation Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA) Politics of Education, 2021
Outstanding Dissertation Award, American Educational Research Association (AERA) Districts in Research and Reform, 2021
AERA Minority Dissertation Fellowship in Education Research, 2019
Gamson, D.A., Turner E.O., & Kissell, R.E. (in press). Policies and Politics of the American School District: Past, Present, and Future. In L. Cohen-Vogel, J. Scott, & P. Youngs (Eds.), AERA Handbook on Educational Policy Research (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Kissell, R. E. (2023). Coercion and consent for the U.S. education market: Community engagement policy under racialized fiscal surveillance. Journal of Education Policy, 38(5), 738–760. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2022.2112759
Trujillo, T., Møller, J., Jensen, R., Kissell, R. E., & Larsen, E. (2021). Images of Educational Leadership: How Principals Make Sense of Democracy and Social Justice in Two Distinct Policy Contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 57(4), 536–569. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X20981148
Kissell, R. E., & Trujillo, T. (2020). Leading Towards Equity Through Decades of Reform: Oral Histories of District Politics and Community-Driven Reform in Oakland. Urban Education, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085920954905
Trujillo, T. M., Hernández, L. E., & Kissell, R. E. (2018). Enduring Dilemmas in Democratic Urban District Reform: The Oakland Case. In D. Gamson & E. Hodge (Eds.), The Shifting Landscape of the American School District: Race, Class, Geography, and the Perpetual Reform of Local Control, 1935–2015 (New edition, pp. 187–222). Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers.
Morales, P. Z., Trujillo, T. M., & Kissell, R. E. (2016). Educational policy and Latin@ youth. In S. L. Nichols (Ed.), Educational Policies and Youth in the 21st Century: Problems, Potential, and Progress. Information Age Publishing.
Trujillo, T. M., Hernandez, Laura. E., Jarrell, T., & Kissell, R. (2014). Community Schools as Urban District Reform: Analyzing Oakland’s Policy Landscape Through Oral Histories. Urban Education, 49(8), 895–929. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085914557644
EDUC 263: Education Reform
EDUC 60: Schooling, Democracy, and Justice
EDUC 160: Issues in Education Reform
EDUC 190: Pandemic Politics (Senior Seminar)
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