From 2011 through 2016, Kim served as a White House appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Prior to joining the Department of Education, Kim served for five years as a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association and for four years as a litigator at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is widely recognized for his legal and policy efforts on civil rights and equity in education and served as a key staff liaison to the Equity and Excellence Commission which produced a national report on fostering education equity and improved school finance policies. Kim has co-authored two new text books on education and the law, one for law students and another (forthcoming in 2017) for graduate students. Kim recognizes the need for federal and state policy to promote school finance equity and to call on research to inform policy advocacy, design, and implementation. The proposed fellowship offers Kim the opportunity to immerse in the research operations of Bruce Baker, a Foundation grantee studying the economics of education and youth inequality, in order to gain a stronger understanding of the research in these areas. Ultimately Kim hopes to strengthen connections between research and policy in the areas of school finance and educational equity.
Through this grant, Robert Kim hopes to deepen his knowledge of research on education finance and gain hands on experience with the mechanics of the research process.
