Hamilton (Hamp) Lankford is Professor of Educational Administration, Policy Studies and Economics at SUNY, Albany.  He is also a Research Fellow with the American Statistical Association.  Dr. Lankford is a part of the CALDER New York team. He is also involved in a variety of activities that link research to education policy in New York. These include his role as an expert witness in the recently determined Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit in which the NY Court of Appeals recently ruled New York’s system of funding for K-12 education in New York City was unconstitutional. He also served as a consultant to the New York State Special Commission on Educational Structure, Policies, and Practices (1993-94) and as a member of the NYS Board of Regents Technical Study Groups concerned with Cost-Effectiveness in Education (1995) and the Generation of Revenues for Education (1994).

Dr. Lankford is a principal investigator on the Teacher Pathways Project, a multi-year study of teachers and teacher preparation programs to examine characteristics of teacher education and pathways into teaching and to identify attributes that impact student outcomes in New York City schools.  In his work, Dr. Lankford considers policies that might alleviate the sorting processes that disadvantage urban schools. His work also considers the little-understood spatial geography of teacher labor markets and the importance of school proximity in teachers’ decisions about where to seek employment and how changes in entry requirements alter the teacher workforce.

Dr. Lankford is author and co-author of numerous publications in education, particularly concerned with teacher labor market issues, teacher quality and student outcomes, the allocation of educational resources, the determinants of school choice, and the effects of enhanced school choice. These include publications in journals including the Public Finance Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economics of Education, Advances in Applied Microeconomics and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.  They also include publications in numerous edited volumes including Performance-Based Approaches to School Reform: Holding Schools Accountable edited by Helen (Sunny) Ladd. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.