Michelle Fine Wins Education Award

Michelle Fine, distinguished professor of psychology and urban education at the Graduate Center, has won the 2014 Deborah W. Meier Award for Heroes in Education from FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. Fine will receive the award at an event in New York on May 28. Previous winners are Deborah Meier, Diane Ravitch, and Jonathan Kozol.

Fine's work addresses questions of social injustice that sit at the intersection of public policy and social research, particularly with respect to youth in schools and criminal justice. A recognized pioneer in participatory action research, she is a founding faculty member of the Public Science Project, which produces critical scholarship for use in social policy debates and organizing movements for educational equity and human rights.

FairTest advances quality education and equal opportunity by promoting fair, open, valid, and educationally beneficial evaluations of students, teachers and schools. The center places special emphasis on eliminating the racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers to equal opportunity posed by standardized tests, and preventing their damage to the quality of education.