PRiME Center Welcomes New Managing Director
The PRiME Center is pleased to announce that Emily Cupito has joined as Managing Director. In this role, Emily will work closely with the Director of Research and Evaluation, the Center’s affiliated professors, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students to conduct and share policy-relevant research on education in Missouri. Emily will also focus on outreach to school and district leaders, policymakers, and education stakeholders, ensuring they have access to evidence they need to make pressing decisions. Here, Emily shares her personal vision for how research can influence education policy and practice.
The Case for Evidence-Informed Policymaking
By: Emily Cupito
What can be done to improve education systems? How can schools help all students get a quality education? Research and evidence can help provide answers to these questions, but this work must be shared with and understood by policymakers before it can affect schools. My career thus far has focused on this juncture, pushing researchers to study more policy-relevant topics and working with policymakers to understand, apply and scale up from research results. I am excited to work together with the PRiME Center and school leaders in pursuing “better evidence, better policy, better schools.”
Research can help school leaders in several ways. Rigorous studies can help identify what works - and what doesn’t. Throughout my career, I have seen many well-meaning policymakers decide to roll out a new program or policy, only to find this new idea had impacts they didn’t expect. Descriptive analyses can help policymakers “see” inside the classroom, unpacking issues and perspectives. Monitoring data can help decision-makers keep tabs on which groups are affected by policy decisions. I believe research is a form of democracy. Collecting and sharing information about how policies affect students and teachers allows their lives, views, and outcomes to be represented in the policy decision-making process.
Why PRiME?
In this unstable period in the world, good evidence and monitoring is critical to ensuring that policymakers are able to balance students’ many needs and interests. I’m excited to join a group already producing important analyses about COVID, including polling parents on their views, collating school reopening plans, and estimating the share of schools reopening in COVID hotspots. PRiME is an independent group committed to objective, unbiased analyses, providing a trusted source of information for school leaders. I am compelled by the Center’s focus on equity and work to share ideas of how schools can address racism. I also am excited by the diversity of topics facing Missouri schools and am eager to support work relevant both to cities such as charter school funding and to rural areas such as the analysis of the four day school week. Finally, I’m excited to work with the PRiME Center as it’s still new and expanding. I’m eager to work with the team to build new partnerships and find new ways to help bridge the gap between research and policy, hand in hand with all of you reading this.
We Need Your Help
In order for the PRiME Center’s work to have an impact on Missouri schools, we need your help! The following are some of the ways in which you can be part of the conversation:
Share ideas for the topics we should study by emailing us at prime@slu.edu
Sign up for our weekly newsletter below
Read policy briefs, education profiles, and blogs on our website
Follow us on Twitter @SLU_PRIME
I’m looking forward to working with you to strengthen Missouri’s schools.
About Emily
Emily brings over 12 years of experience working to close the gap between research and policymaking, particularly in education. She most recently worked for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), whose founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo as well as affiliated professor Michael Kremer won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics. Over 400 million people have been affected by programs and policies proven to be effective by studies conducted by J-PAL-affiliated professors. As the leader of J-PAL’s Africa policy team, Emily worked with governments in over ten countries to understand and apply evidence in their context, helped raise tens of millions of dollars for research initiatives and evidence-based scale-ups, and help found a new organization focused solely on applying evidence in education. Prior to J-PAL, Emily worked for a research organization in Uganda and was a Presidential Management Fellow in the federal government. Emily has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Duke University and undergraduate degrees in Economics and Public Policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.