Name: Roosevelt Saifa Brown
Hometown: Paynesville, Liberia
Program: Urban Education Policy
Q. What drew you to the UEP program at Brown?
A. After nearly a decade of working in urban school districts, Brown University’s UEP program seemed like a good fit for me because of its positioning as a program seeking to develop practitioners who are concerned with finding ways to ameliorate structural and systemic issues in urban public education.
Q. What has been your favorite UEP class and why?
A. I think that the coursework sequence has been purposeful in helping me to acquire the necessary research and critical thinking skills. The summer courses with Professors Wong and Galbert were both amazing as they laid the foundation for understanding the practical and philosophical aims for conducting education research, and were also a harbinger of how the UEP program is structured, with its parallel quantitative and qualitative tracks. Research is the heart of policy making, and the fall semester, although intensive, has been meaningful in that the courses have helped me to strengthen every aspect of my ability to ask important questions, build trust with educational stakeholders and use rigorous theoretical qualitative frameworks and quantitative models to investigate phenomena that could preclude achievement outcomes among students in urban school districts.
Q. Where is your internship placement and what are you working on?
A. My placement is at Blackstone Academy Charter School in Pawtucket, where I am working with the Proficiency-Based Learning Team (PBL). The PBL team is working with a partner organization to implement a new grading policy. My task on the team is to create an effective communication strategy to engage stakeholders about the benefits of adopting an inquiry-based assessment grading policy.
Q. What do you hope to accomplish through the UEP program?
A. I hope to continue to strengthen my ability to conduct rigorous evaluations of education and other public and social policies that impact the educational outcomes of students in urban school districts.
Q. How did your previous education and work experiences lead or motivate you to pursue a master's in urban education policy?
A. My previous educational experiences and professional work experience have afforded me many opportunities to probe into questions about teaching and learning. I started my teaching career as an elementary math teacher and soon became inspired by psychologist David Perkins theory of making learning meaningful by “Playing the Whole Game.” Since then, I have used every teaching opportunity to give students a chance to grapple with real-world problems so that they can use the knowledge that they have acquired to effect positive changes given their own real circumstances. However, midway through my career, I realized that deep thinking and real word problem-solving did not necessarily lead to an increase in standardized test scores for all students. Therefore, I became motivated to learn how to develop policies that would allow for other forms of equally important educational assessments, to give students additional ways to demonstrate their academic abilities.
Q. What are you most passionate about?
A. In addition to understanding how to employ quantitative methods in research, I am also passionate about understanding the historical tensions that continue to shape educational outcomes. I believe that it is important to utilize both of these lenses in analyzing policies.
Q. What are you most excited about in the spring semester?
A. Thus far, I think that all of the courses have been both challenging and engaging. Therefore, I am looking forward to meeting and working with a new crew of UEP faculty, and most importantly, I am most excited about continuing to engage in critical conversations with my fellow UEP colleagues about their work and dreams on how to make the practice of policymaking and analysis meaningful.