Angela Valenzuela

Angela Valenzuela is a professor in both the Educational Policy and Planning Program within the Department of Educational Administration at The University of Texas at Austin and holds a courtesy appointment in the Cultural Studies in Education Program within the Department of Curriculum & Instruction. She also serves as the director of The University of Texas Center for Education Policy.

A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a visiting scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). She is also the author of the award-winning Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring (1999), Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth (2005), and Growing Critically Conscious Teachers: A Social Justice Curriculum for Educators of Latino/a Youth (2016). She also founded an award-winning education blog, Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas.

She served as co-editor of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, as well as the Anthropology and Education Quarterly. A previous Fulbright Scholar, Valenzuela spent her 2007-08 academic year in Mexico where she taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato where she conducted research in the areas of immigration, human rights, and binational relations. In 2019, she taught a summer course in higher education at Beihang University in Beijing, China. Her research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, K-12 and higher education policy, urban education reform, culturally relevant curriculum, Ethnic Studies, and Indigenous education.

Valenzuela also directs the National Latino Education Research and Policy Project. NLERAPP aims to create teacher education pathways for Latino/a youth nationally. In 2022, she became co-chair of the National LULAC Higher Education Committee. Now in its twelfth year, she directs Academia Cuauhtli, a partnership-based, community-anchored Saturday school with district-wide Impacts in Austin, Texas. In 2022, she co-founded Black Brown Dialogues on Policy to promote interethnic and interracial collaboration in Texas. She is both an AERA Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Education.