Jaunelle Pratt-Williams, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist

NORC at the University of Chicago

Jaunelle Pratt-Williams, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Scientist at NORC, where she conducts economic evaluations and mixed-methods policy research studies. Currently, she leads several studies assessing costs and conducting cost-effectiveness analysis of school-based interventions. For these studies, Jaunelle takes a mixed methods approach leading the financial data collection using existing data sources, such as staff contracts and annual budgets and through surveys or interviews of program staff; designing the data collection and analysis of program implementation resources including tools to monetize these resources; and conducting analysis to understand the diverse costs of each intervention.

Jaunelle’s expertise also extends to school finance and related studies focused on the costs of educational programs and interventions. She is the project deputy for a U.S. Department of Education study of funding use by grantees of Part A of Titles I, II, III, and IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). She has collected and analyzed data from the Local Education Agency (School District) Finance Survey (F-33) using mixed methods designs to explore funding trends and the association of student support services funding on student support service staff and student outcomes. Jaunelle also contributed to a statewide assessment of school funding use and needs in New York State. This study included the collection of local school finance data, which she managed, using publicly available data and conducting interviews with district and school leaders.

Jaunelle earned her Ph.D. in education policy from Teachers College, Columbia University. In her dissertation, she examined the ways that large districts in the US make decisions about resource allocation for student support services and the impact of these decisions on staff and district level graduation measures. She also earned an M.A. in politics and education from Teachers College, Columbia University, an M.S.Ed. in elementary education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and a B.A. in journalism and educational studies from Emory University. She was a 5th grade teacher in Philadelphia, PA, Camden, NJ, and Metro-Atlanta.