My teaching and research interests center on educational politics and policymaking, American political development and American constitutional law. Most recently, I wrote Building the Federal Schoolhouse: Localism and the American Education State (Oxford University Press, 2014). The book examines how changes in the federal role in public education have reshaped local politics and how, jointly, federal, state and local actors have constructed the American education state over the past 50 years. I am currently working on a project focusing on the politics of implementing the Common Core State Standards, tentatively entitled "Politics of Proficiency: Common Core and the Inequalities of American Education." I also am a co-founder and director of the Program on Education, Inquiry and Justice at Georgetown, a recently-created program that views education and the teaching arts as a central element of the liberal arts. My earlier work examined the politics of educational financing and the nature of American state constitutionalism, and I have written on the politics of race and desegregation and American federalism. I have received a Spencer Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Education, and was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2013-14, I will be a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC