About Me

I'm a career educator, with over 40 years of experience teaching students from kindergarten to doctoral study. I hold bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in music education, and a certificate of advanced study in educational administration.

I have been a classroom teacher, district supervisor, school administrator, teacher educator, and department chair, and have worked with state departments of education in New York, Connecticut, and Michigan.

In Michigan, I contributed to the development of the MMC Music Education Test, and served as an Assessment Specifications Developer (Music) for the Michigan Model Arts Education and Assessment (MAEIA) program—a joint project of the Michigan Assessment Consortium and the Michigan Department of Education. While in Connecticut, I served as the “Scholar-in-Residence” for the Connecticut State Education Department’s BEST (Beginning Educator Support and Training) Program, a mentoring and induction initiative for early-career teachers.

As a policy author, I have conducted and published research on music teacher evaluation systems and school-college collaboration, served on the editorial boards of several research and policy journals, and have been editor of two academic journals. I have contributed chapters to books on beginning teacher mentoring and induction, qualitative research methods, and music in higher education, and have presented paper sessions and keynote addresses at local, state, national, and international venues.

Through my writing at Eclectablog, a Michigan political blog and website, I have used my experience as a teacher, teacher educator, and policy scholar to move my scholarship into the public arena, providing commentary on matters of educational and public policy.