Faculty

Jay P. Heubert, J.D., Ed.D. (Institute co-chair), is Professor of Law and Education at Teachers College and Adjunct Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He teaches courses on education law and policy.
He has also been chief counsel to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a civil-rights lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, and a high-school English teacher. In 1997-98, he directed a Congressionally-mandated study of high-stakes testing conducted by the National Academy of Sciences.

Rhoda E. Schneider,J.D. (Institute co-chair), is the Senior Associate Commissioner and General Counsel at the Massachusetts Department of Education. She has served twice as Acting Commissioner of Education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, made presentations at national conferences on education law, and written articles on developments in education law.

Gary Orfield, Ph.D., is a professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning at the UCLA Graduate School of Education.  He is also the co-founder and co-director of the Civil Rights Project, which recently moved from Harvard to UCLA.  His interests are in civil rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity.  He is the author of numerous books, articles and reports on those subjects and helped create the Civil Rights Project to develop and publish a new generation of research on multiracial civil rights issues.  On school desegregation, affirmative action, and many other important civil-rights issues, he has led the national effort to stave off the end of the second Reconstruction that began with Brown v. Board of Education – and inspired many others who share his values.

Patricia Gándara, Ph.D., is a professor at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Co-director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project.  She is also Associate Director of the UC Linguistic Minority Research Institute (UC LMRI), and Director of the LMRI Education Policy Center. Between 1981-86 she served as Commissioner for Postsecondary Education for the state of California. She has been a bilingual school psychologist, a Social Scientist with the RAND Corporation, and Director of education research in the California Legislature (State Assembly).  Professor Gándara’s research focuses on educational equity and access for low income and ethnic minority students, language policy, and the education of Mexican origin youth.  She is the author of numerous influential articles and books, including the forthcoming Understanding the Latino Education Gap:  Why Latinos Don’t Go to College (Harvard University Press). 



Dennis D. Parker, J.D., is the Director of the ACLU National Office's Racial Justice Program where he coordinates the racial justice work done by the ACLU's national office and its affiliates. In previous positions, he was Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office and the Director of Education Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He has numerous publications on housing discrimination, educational equity, affirmative action, and testing, and has served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School.



Michael A. Rebell, J.D., is the Executive Director of the Campaign for Educational Equity and Professor of Law and Educational Practice at Teachers College. He is also Counsel to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of two books, Educational Policy Making and the Courts and Equality and Education, and dozens of articles on law and education.

Thomas Sobol, Ed.D., is Christian A. Johnson Professor Emeritus of Outstanding Educational Practice at Teachers College. He served as Superintendent of Schools in Scarsdale, New York and for eight years as Commissioner of Education in New York State. Also active nationally, he chaired the board of the New Standards Project and served on the Executive Committee of the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Maree Sneed, J.D., is a senior partner at the Washington, DC law firm Hogan & Hartson, where she heads the firm’s education practice.  Her work involves advising school districts, educational associations, and private companies in the education sector on a wide range of state and federal legal issues.  Recently Maree was counsel of record in two major Supreme Court cases, Schaffer v. Weast and PICS v. Seattle School District No. 1. She also has counseled school districts on the development of policies and plans for English-language learners and for racial and sexual harassment.  Maree is on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and serves as a board member and secretary of the National School Boards Foundation.  She has also served as a high school teacher and administrator in the Montgomery County Public Schools.

Perry A. Zirkel, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D. University Professor of Education and Law, at Lehigh University, where he held (for its five-year term) the Iacocca Chair in Education has also served as Dean of the College of Education. He has written over 1.000 publications on various aspects of school law and is a frequent presenter across the country.  He writes a regular column for Phi Delta Kappan, Teaching Exceptional Children, and Principal magazine.