Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis: Educational Policy Analysis & Evaluation, PhD
This is a named option in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis PhD.
The PhD in Educational Policy Analysis and Evaluation (EPAE) deepens the knowledge base of students to critically analyze policy, stressing effective formation and analysis of policies governing the administration of all educational institutions. In doing so, students examine how leaders can design, shape, implement, and evaluate school policy. Throughout our program, students will work with faculty on a variety of timely and relevant education policy-related matters.
Learn more about the Educational Policy Analysis and Evaluation program option and the PhD degree requirements.
There are three departments in the University that focus on educational policy-related issues.
In ELPA (Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis), the Department’s emphasis is on conducting educational policy research and analysis with a goal of advancing the achievement of all students through effective policy design, development, implementation, and evaluation of educational policies and programs. Students develop a knowledge base that includes a strong foundation in research methods (both quantitative and qualitative) and an ability to conduct sophisticated educational policy research and analysis grounded in understandings of the educational policy and governance system in the U.S. and the issues and challenges facing educational leaders embedded in school, university, community/technical college, or adult learning contexts. Recent graduates of the program are faculty members at research universities, researchers in research centers and consulting firms, policy analysts for non-profit organizations, university administrators, a university president, and policy analysts at the federal and state levels.
Degree at-a-Glance
Format
Face-to-Face
Fall and Spring semester courses are offered during the evening. Summer courses are offered during the day.
Program Type
PhD Degree
Credits
75 graduate credits
Tuition
Current tuition rates can be found on the Bursar’s Office website. Additional cost of attendance information can be found on the Office of Student Financial Aid’s website
Application Deadline
December 1 (for admission to the following fall semester)
The La Follette School of Public Affairs provides education in public management and policy analysis, as well as in public policy and global governance. Faculty in the School are experts in social policy, health and aging, energy and the environment, international trade and development, and public management. The education provided focuses on gaining quantitative, policy analysis, and public management skills. Students may take elective courses in specific substantive policy areas that are of interest to them. Many La Follette students have an interest in education policy and choose to take courses in ELPA.
A third department, Educational Policy Studies, takes a multi-disciplinary approach (sociology, philosophy, anthropology, history) to the study of educational policy and practice. Students may focus on U.S. or international issues. Students often choose to focus on educational inequality.
If you are interested in policy analysis as it relates to broad social policy issues including, but not limited to education, we recommend the La Follette MPA or MIPA programs. You would be trained in the tools necessary to analyze and design social policy and could take courses in our department and Educational Policy Studies.
If you were interested specifically in educational leadership and policy as a focus for your study (not the broader social policy issues) and intended to work in schools or in school-related policy, particularly in the U.S., we would recommend our department. If you were interested in a more theoretical understanding of educational policy systems and wanted to take a particular disciplinary focus and a mix of international and U.S. contexts, we would recommend Educational Policy Studies.
To inquire about admission, please contact Shari Smith, Graduate Program Manager and Academic Advisor, at ssmith@education.wisc.edu
Applicants are also welcome to reach out to our department faculty to engage in conversations about topics such as research, faculty advising, and curriculum prior to applying for admission.
Meet Some of Our Alumni
Dr. Mario Morris is the Senior Vice President of Administration and Chief Financial Officer at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Before serving at the NCAA, Morris was Executive Deputy Athletics Director at Notre Dame, responsible for the athletics department’s core business and revenue-generation functions. Morris also helped develop Notre Dame’s name, image, and likeness policy (NIL). Before joining Notre Dame, Morris held a variety of financial management roles in the Wisconsin athletic department. As CFO, Morris had primary oversight of Wisconsin’s budget and financial operations. In 2021, he was selected as the College Athletic Business Management Association’s manager of the year. Morris was a starting linebacker on Alabama’s football team, playing on the Crimson Tide’s national championship team in 1992.
At UW–Madison, he earned his JD in 2006 and completed his PhD with ELPA in 2024. He has enjoyed all of his classes, but his favorites were Introduction to Higher and Post-Secondary Education, Surveys and Other Quantitative Data Collection Strategies, and Administration of Intercollegiate Athletics. Morris’s research interests include intercollegiate student-athlete employment, intercollegiate student-athlete professional development, and higher education finance.
When not at work, he enjoys spending time with his family, which includes visiting parks and playgrounds and traveling to new destinations.
Dr. Adam Ross Nelson is a 2008 graduate of the UW-Madison School of Law (JD) and a 2017 graduate of UW–Madison’s School of Education (PhD). Dr. Nelson’s research studied the learning students experience as a result of participating in campus-based quasi-legal and quasi-judicial student conduct systems. After earning his Ph.D. at UW–Madison, Dr. Nelson transitioned into data science, where he applied the lessons and credentials from the law school and the School of Education in studying the reasons students begin the college application process but do not always finish. He contributed to the field as the inaugural data scientist at The Common Application and then later in consulting based in the Washington, DC area. More recently, Nelson has returned to Wisconsin, where he now serves as an occasional instructor of statistics and education in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis. Dr. Nelson has published two books on the topic of data science, including How To Become a Data Scientist: A Guide for Established Professionals (2023) and Confident Data Science: Discover the Essential Skills of Data Science. Related, Dr. Nelson also provides private and corporate training on statistics, research, and data science.
When not working, Dr. Nelson enjoys spending time with family who live close by, also in Wisconsin. He also enjoys writing. You can often find him with a book in one of many of the area’s cozy coffee shops.
Dr. Valyncia Raphael-Woodward is the Executive Director of Employee and Labor Relations at the University of Southern California. At UW–Madison, she earned her JD in 2013 and completed her PhD in 2016. She enjoyed all of her classes, but her favorites were Legal Aspects of Higher Education, Public School Law, and Leadership – Diversity and Equity. Dr. Raphael-Woodward’s dissertation, Expanding the Single Story: Black Female College Athletes Playing Country Club Sports at Predominantly White Institutions, used critical qualitative approaches, including visual methods and an intersectional framework. This study shed light on the participants’ understanding of their own identity and the political, social, and legal power and oppression that influence their sport choices, learning, competition, and social environments, and how they survive, resist, and transcend it. In 2016, Valyncia returned to her home state of California for a role as a Title IX/ADA Coordinator and Chief Diversity Officer. Now at USC, she leads an employee relations unit, and the role affords her the ability to leverage her legal and higher ed leadership and policy credentials earned through UW–Madison.
When not at work, she enjoys spending time with her family, which often looks like hiking, exploring Long Beach, or generally being outside.
Recent Faculty Research and Awards
Our faculty conduct timely research on some of the nation’s most pressing educational policy issues and have been nationally recognized for our work in this area.
Recent Faculty Publications
Dr. Suzanne Eckes shared insights about the implications of cuts to the U.S. Department of Education on PBS and recent legal developments concerning charter schools in the New York Times and Forbes. Dr. Eckes was also cited in an article by The Brookings Institution about the implications of the 2025 Supreme Court term for K-12 education.
Dr. Ain Grooms examined the gendered racism faced by Black women educational leaders and provided policy recommendations for superintendent preparation programs in a work published in Educational Administration Quarterly. Dr. Grooms and colleagues also examined the need to build state-level capacity in order to implement equity-focused computer science policies in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Dr. Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., co-edited a special issue on social justice policies and educational transformation for Educational Policy. Dr. Henry also co-edited a book on policies related to youth anti-citizenship movements. Dr. Henry co-authored the second edition of another book alongside ELPA professor emerita, Dr. Colleen Capper, that offers a nuanced, diversity-oriented perspective on organizational theories used in educational leadership practice and research.
Dr. Mollie McQuillan co-authored an article in the Educational Administration Quarterly on gender-based bias and bullying. Dr. McQuillan, Dr. Janelle Anderson (ELPA alum), and Dr. Lydia Gandy-Fastovich (ELPA alum) also published a piece about school leaders’ understanding of laws related to gender diversity in the American Educational Research Journal.
Dr. Christopher Saldaña described how California’s fiscal accountability system contributed to worsening student outcomes, particularly for Hispanic/Latinx students, in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Dr. Saldaña was also the lead author on a National Education Policy Center report exploring one state’s study of the educational, social, and economic policies needed to close opportunity gaps in pre-K-12 public education in the U.S.
Dr. Anjalé Welton co-authored an article in Educational Policy on the school-to-prison pipeline. In another piece, Dr. Welton and colleagues (including EPAE alum, Dr. Deonte Iverson) describe an anti-racist policy decision-making protocol and how educational practitioners can be anti-racist policy agents in Educational Policy. Dr. Welton also published a case study of a research-practice partnership where she describes how Black women leaders navigate whiteness and anti-Blackness in an urban high school with EPAE alum, Dr. Deonte Iverson.
Recent Faculty Awards
Dr. Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr.
- 2025 Emerging Scholar Honor by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
- Early Career Award in Educational Policy and Politics from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division L (2023)
- Jack A. Culbertson Award, an Early Career Award from the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) (2023)
Dr. Mollie McQuillan
- Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division L (2025)
- William T. Grant Scholars Program (2025)
- Outstanding Short Policy Report in Educational Policy and Politics Award from the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Division L (2023)
Dr. Anjalé Welton
- Linda C. Tillman Social and Racial Justice Award from the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) (2024)