Informing School Districts in Times of Crisis

Professor López Turley founded the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC), a research-practice partnership between Rice and eleven Houston area school districts, representing over 700,000 students. HERC aims to improve educational equity by connecting research to policy and practice, working directly with district leaders. She also founded the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships, which supports over 40 partnerships between research institutions and education agencies throughout the country. A graduate of Stanford and Harvard, she has served in elected and appointed positions in the American Sociological Association, the American Educational Research Association, the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, and the National Research Council of the National Academies. She received the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching at Rice, and she is on Education Week’s list of US-based scholars “who did the most last year to shape educational practice and policy.”