Dr. Burroughs has a Ph.D. in political science and a master of public administration degree from the University of Georgia.
Also notable: Dr. Burroughs is the author of Teaching for Excellence and Equity (2019), published by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). He has also served as a member of the School Board in Lansing, Michigan.
Dr. Burroughs has a strong background in quantitative research, with extensive experience in statistics, research design, survey development, data collection, and data management. He also has strong communication skills, having produced reports aimed at a wide variety of audiences.
Dr. Burroughs’ research is focused on mechanisms for alleviating social inequality. A major theme in his work is how public policies and institutions mediate background inequalities, with an emphasis on the role of teacher quality and curricular differentiation in STEM. He has employed a wide variety of methodological techniques to study these questions (e.g., multi-level modeling, randomized controlled trials, survey research, etc.), using both original data collection and large-scale secondary data sets. Dr. Burroughs routinely draws on methods and perspectives from a number of fields (education, policy evaluation, political science, history, economics, sociology, and analytic philosophy), with peer-reviewed publications in multiple academic fields.
Prior to his work at PPA, Dr. Burroughs was part of educational research and evaluation centers affiliated with Indiana University and Michigan State University, where he participated in study design, data collection, project management, analysis, and reporting. He has also worked as a communications consultant and provided technical assistance as part of school reform efforts.
Dr. Burroughs brings a synthetic approach to research and decades of experience working with stakeholders from diverse backgrounds. His approach combines the most rigorous feasible methods with a strong commitment to equity and collaboration.