Saving America's School Infrastructure

Professor Faith E. Crampton’s professional career has spanned public education, senior administrative positions in state government, senior research and policy positions in national education and legislative organizations, and graduate faculty positions in public and private research universities. Her current position is Associate Professor of education finance and economics of education in the Department of Administrative Leadership at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Prior to joining the graduate faculty at UWM, she was a senior researcher with the with the National Education Association, Washington, D.C., where she specialized in education funding issues. She is past President and Program Chair of the Fiscal Issues Policy and Education Finance Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Education Finance Association (AEFA) where she chaired the Outstanding Dissertation Award Committee and the Dissemination Committee. Currently, she is a member of the Board of Directors for the University Council for Educational Administration’s (UCEA) Center for the Study of Education Finance. She has held graduate faculty appointments in education finance and the economics of education at the University of Oregon and the University of Rochester, New York. At the administrative and policy level, she served as Program Principal in Education Finance for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, Colorado, and Deputy Director of the Ohio Student Loan Commission. She has served as an expert witness in state school finance litigation and as an expert consultant to state legislatures on the reform of state education funding systems. Her research focus rests primarily on the study of policy goals of state education funding systems. She has published widely in journals such as the Journal of Education Finance, Journal of School Business Management, Journal of the Council of Education Facilities Planners International, Educational Considerations, and School Business Affairs, in addition to authoring a number of monographs, reports, book chapters, and policy briefs on state education finance legislation and litigation. She is Executive Editor of the scholarly journal, Educational Considerations, and a member of the editorial staff of the Journal of Education Finance. She was principal investigator for the NEA-funded research project, the School Modernization Needs Assessment, which culminated in the NEA publication, Modernizing Our Schools: How Much Will It Cost?, a 50-state analysis of unmet funding needs for school infrastructure and education technology. The results of this study, the first of its kind, garnered national media attention and was followed by invited briefings for United States Congressional staff and White House Council of Economic Advisors. She was guest editor with David C. Thompson of the Fall 2001 special issue of the Journal of Education Finance on the crisis in school infrastructure funding.

Dr. Crampton has presented scholarly papers at the conferences of numerous major national and international research and policy associations, such as the American Education Finance Association (AEFA), American Educational Research Association (AERA), British Educational Management and Administration Society (BEMAS), International Intervisitation Programme (a conference convened by the University Council for Educational Administration and the Commonwealth Council on Educational Administration), National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), National Conference of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA), Organizations Concerned About Rural Education (OCRE), and the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA). She received her Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Leadership from The Ohio State University; M.S.Ed. in Educational Administration from Western Illinois University; and A.B., magna c