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Diane Hirshberg

Associate Professor of Education Policy

Phone: (907) 786-5413
Fax: (907) 786-7739
E-Mail: afdbh1@uaa.alaska.edu
Map to my office

Diane Hirshberg is an Associate Professor of Education Policy at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her research interests include education policy analysis, with a focus on Alaska Native education, as well as issues impacting other ethnic, racial and linguistic minorities. Diane’s dissertation research focused on how legislators’ constructions of race and ethnicity impact education policymaking around indigenous education issues in Alaska. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA, an MPA from Columbia University, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley.

Prior to joining ISER, Diane held several research and academic positions. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Oregon from 2002-3. From 1998-2002, Diane was a researcher and project manager at Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an education policy research organization based at UC Berkeley. There she directed the California Department of Social Services Child Care Planning Project, a multi-year look at the impact of welfare reform on child care supply and demand in California. Before joining PACE, Diane worked at UC DATA, part of the Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley, as a member of the team conducting the process evaluation of Cal-Learn, California’s reform initiative for pregnant and parenting teens on welfare. At UCLA, Diane participated in a multi-year study of ten racially mixed secondary schools around the nation engaged in efforts to reduce tracking and ability grouping, headed by Jeannie Oakes and Amy Stuart Wells.

Diane was born in Massachusetts, and clings furiously to her Red Sox obsession despite moving to California when she was 10.

• Publications & Presentations
• Vita

Current Funded Research

February 2009

Alaska K-12 School History. Research to support and lay groundwork for gathering, organizing, and analyzing primary source documents and materials to publish a history of formal K-12 schooling of Alaska's indigenous peoples.

An Exploration of Experiences and Outcomes of Mt. Edgecumbe High School Graduates (1986-2006)
With Brit DelMoral, Sociology student
This study examines the educational, social, and cultural experiences and outcomes of Alaska Native students who graduated from Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a residential school in Sitka, Alaska, between 1985 and 2006.  We are surveying and interviewing students about why they attended the school, and how it has affected their lives.  For more information or to participate go to:
http://iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Home/ResearchAreas/mtedge.htm

Significant Influences in the Pre-K through College Educational Lives of Alaska Native Alumni of the University of Alaska Anchorage
Diane Erickson and Diane Hirshberg, with Suzanne Sharp and Uyuriukaraq Lily Anne Andrews Ulran

This study is explores why some Alaska Natives successfully complete college, while so many others do not. We interviewed 23 Alaska Native alumni who graduated from UAA between 1975 and 2005. Study participants are in the first generation of their family to earn a baccalaureate degree. Specifically, we asked:

• What events, activities or relationships across the pre-K through post-secondary educational continuum do Alaska Native alumni of UAA cite as key to their successful attainment of a baccalaureate degree?
• When did Alaska Native alumni see college as part of their future?
• Across these alumni stories, is there a consistent set of key individuals present in their lives, resources available or strategies developed that they believe were instrumental to their success in earning a degree?
• Why did they want the degree?
• What has the degree meant to these alumni and to their communities in the years since it was granted?
  

Alaska Native Graduates of UAA: What Can They Tell Us?

Evaluation of the Alaska Educational Innovations Network

Teacher Supply & Demand. Melissa Hill at Alaska Teacher Placement, UA Statewide, has brought together a group which includes ISER (Diane Hirshberg & Lexi Hill), the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, the Alaska Department of Labor, and the Alaska Department Administration Division of Retirement & Benefits (TRS/PRS) to identify promising strategies to address ongoing teacher shortage and teacher turnover issues in Alaska. ISER is conducting the data analysis and will produce a report detailing current and anticipated teacher supply and demand. The project is funded by federal, state and university funds. 

Teaching American History. Researchers will use an experimental evaluation design in which they will evaluate success of "Clio" for the Anchorage School District as a part of their application for a Teaching American History grant from USDOE.

Digital Learning Evaluation: In response to AASB's establishing Consortium for Digital Learning (providing laptops for students), ISER researchers, as external evaluators for the project, will assist districts with internal evaluation plans; work with districts to define data for Consortium-wide and summative evaluation; and aggregate, analyze, and summarize outcome data. Researchers will also prepare summative evaluation reports on the Consortium's succcess. Funding agency: Association of Alaska School Boards

Project Appeal Evaluations: A continuation of evaluating the Advanced Placement Incentive Program, a collaborative initiative to increase the number of underrepresented students taking Advanced Placement (AP) classes and passing the AP exam among four school districts in Alaska (Anchorage School District, Fairbanks North Star, Kuspuk, Yukon-Kuskokwim). Funding agency: Anchorage School District.

ASD 21st Century Learning Communities Initiative: Serving as an external evaluator, ISER researchers will assess the project's effectiveness in improving outcomes for at-risk and under-performing students in Anchorage elementary schools. Funding agency: Anchorage School District

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