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Lee receives AERA Early Career Award
By MARY COCHRANE
Contributing Editor
The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has bestowed its Early Career Award on a UB professor whose research focuses on educational equity and achievement.
Jaekyung Lee, associate professor of counseling, school and educational psychology in the Graduate School of Education (GSE), received the award yesterday during the AERA's 88th-annual meeting in Chicago.
Lee, who earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago, said he was "humbled and honored to receive this prestigious award," which is given each year to a scholar who has conducted a distinguished program of cumulative educational research in any field of educational inquiry within the first decade of receiving a doctoral degree.
GSE Dean Mary H. Gresham commended the choice of Lee for the award.
"Professor Lee is committed to unlocking the keys to student potential among diverse groups and his very active research program confirms this," Gresham said. "Too often this potential is overlooked because of limitations in either assessing their talent, or in understanding how to interpret and utilize the existing data that describes the so-called achievement gap. As this award suggests, Professor Lee's research is of critical import in our attempt to close the gap."
Lee's current research focuses on educational accountability for excellence and equity, particularly the issue of closing the achievement gap under the No Child Left Behind Act. He analyzes the effects of school reform policy and practice on student achievement with the goal of improving K-12 education and school improvement in the United States and beyond. His work also seeks to improve educational equity among racial and social groups of students. His findings, published in Educational Researcher and Peabody Journal of Education, showed a significant setback during the 1990s in national progress toward racial equity.
Lee's most recent work is central "to the current climate of school accountability as articulated in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which is aimed at achieving high standards for all students and closing the achievement gap through high-stakes testing and holding schools accountable for performance results," he said.
"My recent study on the impact of accountability on equity, published in American Educational Research Journal and Harvard Civil Rights Project Report, showed that the past high-stakes testing movement had limited impact because it failed to address racial and social inequity in terms of eliminating disparities in key schooling conditions and resources."
His numerous publications include "Racial and Ethnic Achievement Gap Trends" in Educational Researcher (2002) and "The Impact of Accountability on Racial and Socioeconomic Equity" in American Educational Research Journal (2004). His most recent publication is "How National Data Help Tackle the Achievement Gap" (Albany: SUNY Press 2007).
A professor at UB since 2002, Lee is the author of the forthcoming book "The Testing Gap: Scientific Trials of Test-driven School Accountability Systems for Excellence and Equity."
He is an editorial board member of Education Policy Analysis Archives, as well as an academic advisory board member of the Harvard University Civil Rights Project on the No Child Left Behind Act. A former National Academy of Education postdoctoral fellow, Lee's research has been supported by numerous national grants from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation and AERA.
As part of his award, Lee will speak at AERA's annual meeting in March 2008 in New York City. The American Educational Research Association is an interdisciplinary research association for some 25,000 scholars from the United States and other countries who undertake research in education. Founded in 1916, AERA aims to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good.