Research

I study how policies of student assignment and resource distribution affect educational opportunities for students. I try to take a holistic approach to the study of educational policy, combining personal experience, historical research, normative thinking, and descriptive & causal analysis of specific policy interventions to more fully understand how institutional resources and demographics matter for student outcomes and opportunity.

Dissertation Project

The End of Desegregation? School Improvement, Integration, and Equal Opportunity in Durham, North Carolina (in progress)
- Abstract: The early 1990s is often seen as the end of desegregation as a major school improvement policy. New ideas about education reform that stressed competition through school choice and holding schools accountable for results were slowly filtering up through the states to federal education policy. However, in Durham, North Carolina a progressive multiracial political coalition returned to the issue of school district consolidation and racial integration as a way to bridge racial and economic segregation and inequalities between city and county school systems. Through Durham’s community debate around merger and integration, this paper offers one of the first examinations of school desegregation as student assignment policy – a policy debate that takes place outside of the shadow of Brown and court-led questions about constitutional violations and remedies. Instead, Durham’s debate is a community conversation about the effectiveness of integration strategies, the inherent tensions within integration efforts, and how integration fits within a new constellation of educational ideas and priorities.

Peer reviewed work on measuring school poverty & educational disadvantage (and evaluating free lunch)

Domina, T., Clark, L., Radsky, V., & Bhaskar, R. (2024). There Is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch: School Meals, Stigma, and Student Discipline. American Educational Research Journal, 61(2), 287-327. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312231222266
Spiegel, M., Clark, L. R., Domina, T., Radsky, V., Yoo, P. Y., & Penner, A. (2024). Measuring School Economic Disadvantage. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 47(2), 413-435. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737231217683

Peer reviewed work on school choice

Carlson, D., Domina, T., Carter, J., Perera, R. M., Radsky, V., & McEachin, A. (2025). Structuring Choice Policy, School Segregation and the Two-Staged School Choice Process. American Educational Research Journal, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312251355992

Other/Past Work

- Radsky, V. (2013). Developing Inclusive Social Policies: Education for Azerbaijan’s Internally Displaced. Presented at AAA Education Policy Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, May 2013. Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwlZa2UYi4PNYWdJcV92RE5UaVE/view?usp=sharing.

- Mikailova, U. & Radsky, V. (2013). School Leadership in Azerbaijani Early Childhood Education: Implications for Education Transfer. In Eeva Hujala, Manjula Waniganayake & Jillian Rodd (Eds). Researching Leadership in Early Childhood Education. Tampere: Tampere University Press 2013, 193–212. Article Available: http://ilrfec.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/art_11Mikailova-Radsky.pdf and book information available: http://ilrfec.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/art_00Kansi.pdf.

- Kazimzade, E. & Jokić, B (2013). The Roles of Parents in the Decision Concerning the Use of Private Tutoring Services. In Jokic, B., (Ed.) (2013). Emerging from the Shadow: A Comparative Qualitative Exploration of Private Tutoring in Eurasia. Zagreb: NEPC. Book available: https://www.edupolicy.net/portfolio-posts/emerging-from-the-shadow-a-comparative-qualitative-exploration-of-private-tutoring-in-eurasia/

*Although I am not an author, I contributed significantly to the cited chapter of the book and am acknowledged following the table of contents.

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