Jennifer King Rice is a visiting fellow with the Urban Insitute and Professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at the University of Maryland.  Prior to joining the faculty at Maryland, she was a researcher at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Rice’s research draws on the discipline of economics to explore education policy questions concerning the efficiency, equity, and adequacy of U.S. public education.  Her current research focuses on how policies affect the ability of low-performing schools to hire and retain quality educators.  Also, her work has examined alternative teacher compensation systems, National Board Certification for teachers, high-stakes accountability and school reconstitution policies.

Dr. Rice is currently working on several projects that use multiple methods to understand the policies and resources needed to hire and retain qualified teachers in difficult-to-staff schools. She has published more than 50 articles and book chapters and serves on the editorial boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy, and Policy and Leadership in Schools.  Her authored and edited books include Fiscal Policy in Urban Education; High Stakes Accountability: Implications for Resources and Capacity; and Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes, winner of the 2005 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education writing award.  

As a national expert in education finance and policy, Dr. Rice regularly consults with policy research organizations and has worked with numerous state and federal organizations including the Maryland State Department of Education, the Maryland State Attorney General’s Office, the Texas State Legislature, and the U.S. Department of Education serving two terms on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Technical Planning Panel on Education Finance and on several national review panels.  She was recognized with a National Academy of Education / Spencer Foundation post-doctoral fellowship in 2002-03.  She is a past president of the American Education Finance Association and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Urban Institute. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University.