Huriya Jabbar is an associate professor in the Educational Policy and Planning program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. Her research uses sociological and critical theories to examine how market-based ideas in PK-12 and higher education shape inequality, opportunity, and democracy in the U.S. She is currently studying school choice policy and school leaders' behavioral responses to competition; choice and decision-making in higher education; and teacher job choices, recruitment, and retention. Her most recent strand of research examines how improvement in schools and organizations can be impeded by staff turnover, which can reproduce structural inequalities in education. This work is in collaboration with Jennifer Holme and supported by a $1 million grant from the Spencer Foundation.
Her work has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Harvard Educational Review, Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Researcher, and Sociology of Education. She received the Early Career Award for Excellence in Education Research in 2021 from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Division L (Policy and Politics) Early Career Award in 2020. She was a 2013 recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and a 2016 NAED/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow, which supported a study exploring teachers' job search processes, and the role of their social networks, in three charter-dense cities: New Orleans, Detroit, and San Antonio.
She is also affiliated with the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice and the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans at Tulane University, where she continues to study issues related to school choice in New Orleans, and is a Faculty Research Affiliate at the Population Research Center at UT.
Huriya received a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Economics from the New School for Social Research, and Ph.D in Education Policy, Organization, Measurement, & Evaluation from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jabbar, H., Boggs, R. & Childs, J. (2022). Race, gender, and networks: How teachers social connections structure access to job opportunities in districts with school choice. AERA Open, 8(1), 1–13.
Jabbar, H., Daramola, E., Marsh, J., Enoch-Stevens, T., Alonso, J. & Allbright, T. (2022). Social construction is racial construction: Examining the target populations in school-choice policies. American Journal of Education, 128(3), 487–518.
Jabbar, H. & Menashy, F. (2022). Economic imperialism in education research: A conceptual review. Educational Researcher, 51(4), 279288.
Schudde, L.., Jabbar, H. & Hartman, C. (2021). How political and ecological contexts shape information seeking behaviors of transfer-intending community college students. Sociology of Education, 94(1).
Schudde, L., Jabbar, H., Epstein, E. & Yucel, E. (2021). Students sensemaking of higher education policies during the vertical transfer process. American Educational Research Journal, 58(5), 921–953.
Jabbar, H., Cannata, M., Germain, E. & Castro, A. (2019). Its who you know: The role of social networks in a changing labor market. American Educational Research Journal. doi:https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/10.3102/0002831219879092.
Jabbar, H., Castro, A. & Germain, E. (2019). To switch or not to switch? The influence of school choice and labor market segmentation on teachers job searches. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 41(3), 375399.
Jabbar, H., Fong, C., Germain, E., Li, D., Sanchez, J., Sun, W. & Devall, M. (2019). The competitive effects of school choice on student achievement: A systematic review. Educational Policy, 36(2), 247–281. doi:https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/doi/full/10.1177/0895904819874756.
Jabbar,, H.., Serrata, C.., Epstein, E.. & Sanchez, J.. (2017). Échale ganas: Family and community support of Latino/a community college students transfer to four-year universities. Journal of Latinos and Education, 18(3), 258–276.
Jabbar, H. (2017). Recruiting talent: School choice and teacher hiring in New Orleans.. Educational Administration Quarterly. (View)
Holme, J., Jabbar, H., Germain, E. & Dinning, J. (2017). Rethinking teacher turnover: Developing new measures of instability in schools. Educational Researcher. (View)
Jabbar, H. (2016). Between structure and agency: Contextualizing school leaders strategic responses to market pressures. American Journal of Education, 122(3), 399–431.
Jabbar, H. (2016). The visible hand: Markets, politics, and regulation in post-Katrina New Orleans schools. Harvard Education Review, 86(1), 1–26.
Jabbar, H. (2015). Competitive networks and school leaders perceptions: The formation of an education marketplace in post-Katrina New Orleans. American Educational Research Journal, 52(6), 1093–1131. (View)
Jabbar, J. (2015). Every kid is money: Market competition and school leader strategy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(4), 638–659. (View)
Jabbar, H. (2015). Drenched in the past: The evolution of market-oriented reforms in New Orleans. Journal of Education Policy, 30(6), 751–722.
Scott, J., Jabbar, H., Goel, P., DeBray, E. & Lubienski, C. (2015). Evidence use and advocacy coalitions: Intermediary organizations and philanthropies in Denver, Colorado. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(124), 1–23. http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/2079.
Scott, J. & Jabbar, H. (2014). The hub and the spokes: Foundations, intermediary organizations, incentivist reforms, and the politics of research evidence. Educational Policy, 28(2), 233–257.
DeBray, E., Scott, J., Lubienski, C. & Jabbar, H. (2014). Intermediary organizations in charter school policy coalitions: Evidence from New Orleans. Educational Policy.
Jabbar, H. (2013). The case of payment-by-results: Re-examining an incentive program in 19th-century English schools. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45(3), 220–243.
Jabbar, H. (2011). The behavioral economics of education: New directions for research. Educational Researcher, 40(9), 446–453. (View)
APX Flash Funding Grant: GoKAR! (Kids Against Racism)
Our proposal, GoKAR! (Kids Against Racism): Teaching Anti-Racism to Preschoolers at Home, will focus on engaging with childrens context to influence emotional and cognitive processes to counter the development of racial bias. The research team hopes to recruit 100 caregiver-child pairs over the next year to explore the potential of GoKAR! to reduce implicit bias and increase awareness of structural racism in young children.
Teacher Turnover Project: Examining the Mechanisms Through Which Instability Disrupts Schools, and How to Mitigate It
In many schools, teacher retention is a persistent problem, requiring school and district staff members to constantly search for, hire, and train teachers, often only to lose them after a short period of time. While researchers have studied causes of turnover in schools, the consequences of turnover on schools have received far less attention. Our research project examines how turnover affects schools, and what schools can do to protect themselves from the negative effects of turnover when it occurs. We focus on the processes and mechanisms through which turnover influences schools efforts to improve learning in Mathematics and English Language Arts. The study consists of four-year case studies of high schools in Texas. We work with high schools that are high-poverty (40% or greater economically disadvantaged students), and that vary along certain dimensions of school climate/culture surveys. The data we are collecting include surveys, interviews, and observations. We hypothesize that the key mechanism through which turnover can disrupt improvement efforts is through its effects on the social organization of schools. We examine how turnover affects social networks, relationships, and shared vision and problem solving, and how these relationships may vary by school context. We also examine whether school organizational structures may help to moderate those relationships. Knowing how and why turnover affects schools can lead to potential points of intervention, such as new structures or practices, that may be helpful in mitigating negative effects on schools and students or help to stabilize schools. We collaborate with districts by incorporating school district concerns and issues in our design and questions.
This on-going work is funded by the Spencer Foundation (Lyle Spencer Grant Program).
School Choice Policy Research Center: A National Research Partnership To Improve School Choice For Disadvantaged Students
The mission of REACH is to provide objective, rigorous, and applicable research that informs and improves school choice policy design and implementation to increase opportunities and outcomes for disadvantaged students.
The Texas Transfer Project: Understanding the Experiences of Transfer-Intending Community College Students at Various Phases of the Transfer Process
The Texas Transfer Project encompasses several ongoing studies related to postsecondary transfer in Texas. Despite growing research on transfer, few qualitative studies have analyzed the complete process, from initial intention to baccalaureate completion or dropout. This project will build a stronger understanding of the longitudinal transfer process by following 100 transfer-intending community college students for six years. We follow transfer-intending community college students throughout their academic journey (including navigating the community college, choice of transfer destination, changes in educational aspirations, and post-transfer experiences). To further strengthen the policy relevance and contribution of the project, we incorporate state administrative data from the Texas Education Research Center (ERC) to illustrate how the rich experiential observations from our qualitative data align with broader patterns of credit accumulation and transfer. Dr. Schudde uses state administrative data from the Texas Educational Research Center (ERC) to examine transfer patterns and the role of state transfer policies in predicting bachelors degree attainment among community college transfer students. Dr. Jabbar uses the ERC data to examine student application patterns and college choice. Combined, the Texas Transfer Project will offer qualitative findings that highlight student voices, while also leveraging data from the full population of attendees at Texas colleges to demonstrate the scale of the observed patterns. This work is funded by the Greater Texas Foundation.
Early Career Award for Excellence in Education Research, American Educational Research Association (2021)
Early Career Award, American Educational Research Association - Division L (2020)
Outstanding Reviewer Award, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Association (2017)
Postdoctoral Fellow, National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation (2016)
Dissertation Award, AERA Division L (Policy & Politics) (2015)
Dissertation Award, AERA Division A (Administration, Organization, & Leadership) (2015)
Dissertation Award, Politics of Education Association (2015)
Outstanding Doctoral Research Award, Emerald/EFMD (2014)
Dissertation Fellow, National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation (2013 - 2014)
David Clark Scholar, University Council for Educational Administration (2011 - 2012)
Lebon D James, Ph.D., expected 2022 (Supervisor)
His research examines the role of principals, K-12 educational leadership preparation, and school improvement.
Greg Worthington, Ph.D., expected 2021 (Committee Member)
Generally, Greg's research interests include the nexus of education policy, urban policy, and community development, and Xicana/o/x studies. Specifically, his research focuses specifically on the effects of market-based educational reforms on public schools and a developing a narrative of the poverty, struggle, and accomplishment of Xicana/o/x and Latina/o/x peoples in San Antonio, Texas. His research experience also involves the effect of economic revitalization programs on education in impoverished contexts, the sociological and educational effects of...
Edgar Manuel Torres (Committee Member)
Priscilla S Aquino-Garza (Supervisor)
Rachel W Boggs (Supervisor)
Sebastián Nunez Miranda (Supervisor)
