Note: I have retired from teaching and (with mixed emotions) no longer accept new graduate students.
Bruce Fuller, a sociologist, delves into how institutions, large and small, try to lift the learning and growth of children. This prompts the question of how local actors, educators, and policy players can work smarter to lift organizations.
Recent work delves into:
- How schools in Los Angeles raised the achievement of students for two decades prior to the pandemic, reported in When Schools Work(link is external). The rise of cultural and political pluralism at the 21st century's dawn spurred a variety of education reform initiative, a portion of which paid off for kids and teachers.
- Did the massive shock of Covid-19 advance long-term change inside schools? This question motivates current work with graduate students and colleagues at the American Institutes for Research. An initial report (link is external)reveals promising examples of lasting gains in schools, despite uncertain civic and funding environments.
- As child-care and pre-K options spread for families -- a version of "organizational pluralism" -- my forthcoming book (Enriching Childhood) offers a traveler's guide for mapping this color-quilt of sector, along how educator can boost the benefits of early education in a diverse society, written for practitioners, advocates, and policy designers. My earlier book, Standardized Childhood (link is external)is now available in Mandarin. Preschool progress is reported(link is external) in Viet Nam.
Research papers, short essays -- policy, pluralism, and politics:
- "Which families benefited from the expanded child tax credit," with Shruti Bathia, Ashley Burnside, Elaine Maag, and Qifan Zhang. Forthcoming in Social Services Review. Preprint available.
- "Democrats are ceding high moral ground in education to conservatives," Washington Post(link is external).
- "Finding integrated suburbs? Latino families settle in diverse suburbs" with Shruti Bathia, Claudia Galindo, Francisco Lagos and Sophia Rabe-Hesketh, appearing(link is external) in the Russell-Sage Foundation Journal. On segregation, also see: "To integrate schools, Biden should start with pre-K." Chicago Tribune(link is external).
- "Have more babies! JD Vance wags his finger at middle-class moms", appearing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer(link is external).
- "Is the common school dead? Dilemmas of plural public spaces." Appearing(link is external) in the book, Privatization in and of Public Education. An earlier sketch(link is external) appears in the Washington Post.
- "On California's tenth anniversary of school funding formula, celebrate progress and double-down on fairness", with Julien Lafortune, appearing(link is external) in Edsource.
- "Memo to Los Angeles schools chief, focus on results" with Pedro Noguera, appearing in EdSource(link is external).
- "Biden's pre-k plan alone won't achieve lasting gains for poor children," published in the Washington Post(link is external). A series of papers examine inequities in the organizaton of preschool and early education, including "Do preschool entitlements distribute quality fairly?, with Talia Leibovitz and appearing(link is external) in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly.
- "The verdict on charter schools?", a review essay in the Atlantic Monthly(link is external).
Additional Books:
- Organizing Locally(link is external) examines why many big institutions are decentralizing control out to local shops -- from charter schools to clinic-based health care to aid for military veterans. My research teams details promising advantages, and worrisome features, as market and state institution advance decentralizing forms of work.
- Relatedly, the rise of the school choice movement, along with initial evidence on which children and families benefit, are reported in Inside Charter Schools (link is external)and Who Chooses, Who Loses(link is external)? (with Richard Elmore and Gary Orfield).
Over the past four decades I have taught in fields of sociology of organizations and public policy. A California native, I served as an education advisor to the California legislature, then for an eccentric governor. After graduate school at Stanford University, I worked as a research sociologist at the World Bank, then taught comparative policy at Harvard University, before returning to the Bay Area
