Education
- Ph.D. – Vanderbilt University, Leadership and Policy Studies
- B.A. – Colgate University, Psychology
Areas of Expertise
- Educational policy and research
- Politics of education
- Improving schools and school systems
- Policy development in education
- Policy implementation
Research
Focused on domestic education policy, Cohen-Vogel is interested in identifying the programs and practices that are successfully raising schooling outcomes for people farthest from educational opportunity in the U.S.
As the Frank A. Daniel Jr. Distinguished Professor, she works through engaged partnerships with school districts across the nation to achieve better outcomes equitably at scale. Cohen-Vogel is currently applying her expertise in implementation and improvement research through several funded projects, including:
- the U.S. Department of Education-funded Teacher and School Leadership Incentive Programs with Pitt County Schools to build an improvement learning ecosystem in the district ($5.7 million);
- the Early Learning Network Project funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to examine factors that may mediate the effect of high-quality PreK experiences on the later life outcomes of North Carolina’s rural children ($4.5 million); and
- IES- and foundation-funded projects exploring the role of school-based Pre-K and early grades principal leadership in students’ academic achievement ($850,000); among others.
Cohen-Vogel is also a steering committee member and investigator on a foundation-funded development project with ncIMPACT and myFutureNC to support 15 Local Educational Attainment Collaboratives across North Carolina and representing nearly 35 school districts ($1.1 million). Previously, she served as associate director of the five-year, $13.5 million National Center for Research and Development on Scaling Up Effective Schools, a research-practice partnership between UNC-Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt University, Florida State University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Education Development Center, and two of the nation’s largest school districts.
Serving on a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, she co-authored the 2022 NASEM Report on the Future of Educational Research, whose recommendations have been adopted into law and signed by President Biden on Dec. 29, 2022. Leading the Division of Education Policy and Politics (Division L), Cohen-Vogel has also served as vice president of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association and President of the Politics of Education Association.
Articles by Cohen-Vogel have been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the American Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, and Educational Administration Quarterly, among others.