About

Susan Moffitt is the John Hazen White Professor of Public Policy, Chair of the Department of Political Science, and Director of the Realizing Rights Lab at Brown University. Her research combines political science and public policy to explain and address challenges in policy development and implementation within government agencies, with a particular focus on public health and education. She has published multiple books, including 'Reforming the Reform: Problems of Public Schooling in the American Welfare State,' 'Making Policy Public: Participatory Bureaucracy in American Democracy,' and 'The Ordeal of Equality: Did Federal Regulation Fix the Schools.' Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Governance. Moffitt has been recognized as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and received the 2025 Herbert Simon Award from the Midwest Political Science Association for her contributions to the scientific study of bureaucracy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Economic growth
• Development economics
• Marketing
• Public economics
• Public relations
• Business

Selected publications

• The Politics of Administrative Ease: Public Access to Local Special Education Information

  Brown Digital Repository · 2026-04-09

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Administrative Designs and Access to Political Arenas in Public Education

  Governance · 2025-11-07

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT What administrative and political features render spaces of political action publicly accessible? Drawing on Schattschneider's core elements of visibility and scope, we offer a framework to identify administrative features that are crucial to democratic accessibility and apply this framework to American public school board meetings. We analyze online access to school board meeting information through original data retrieved from more than 11,000 U.S. school districts. We find that the availability of information about school board meetings systematically varies across districts' administrative, geographic, and political attributes. Through comparative case studies of four school districts from 2019 to 2022, our analysis identifies ways administrative procedures further shape venue access and how group mobilization can facilitate greater access in the context of onerous administrative procedures. Our results elucidate how public access to policymaking venues depends on governmental and group investments: both state and civil society contribute to a venue's democracy.

  PublisherDOI

• 8. Learning from Reforms to the Reform

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Each iteration of reform creates problems, even as it solves or attempts to solve part of the problem. Chapter 8 reviews the main arguments in the book and poses three concluding puzzles. First, how might insights from reforming instructional support in public schools provide a framework for considering reforms in other policy domains, such as public health? Second, how might lessons from history provide paths forward in two key domains of school improvement: instructional support and assessments? Third, what would it take to repair the unequal and inequitable infrastructure on which public education builds? Working to repair the foundation outside of schools is essential for teachers to have the opportunity to teach and for students to have the opportunity to learn. Society will continue to reform the reforms. The question for reform, thus, becomes “what kinds of problems will reform create?” Understanding the problems that reforms create can provide guidance on how to manage those problems and inform future reforms.

  PublisherDOI

• 3. How Reforms Create Problems

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 1. What Happens after Reforms?

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract What happens after reform legislation passes and becomes law? Chapter 1 identifies three parts of the book’s answer to this question. One part entails more policy making in the spaces between legislation and implementation: the mezzo level. Rather than moving straight into the implementation of statutory mandates, reform aspirations also manifest in policy making at subnational levels: in state agencies, county offices, and district offices, where significant policy making in domains like education, public health, and related safety net programs occurs. A second part identifies how policy makers in the spaces between legislation and implementation rarely make policy from scratch. Instead they do so in inherited, complex terrains packed with prior policies and practices. This leads to collision with extant institutions, debris left from prior policies, and adjacent policies, yielding problems for mezzo-level policy makers: the third part of our answer. Whatever their type or intention, reforms create problems. Drawing on superintendents’ insights, the chapter lays out four overarching problems that reforms in the context of American public schooling create: policy spillover, policy pockets, policy overload, and policy sparks. This chapter briefly introduces the key components of our argument and sketches the plan for the rest of the book.

  PublisherDOI

• Policymaker and Practitioner Perspectives and Insights from Birmingham, Alabama: An Interview with Judge Andra D. Sparks, Mankinta Holloway, and Melanie Colston

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2023-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  What are promising interventions to reconstruct the safety net? What are paths forward for complementary services? For policymaker and practitioner perspectives on these questions, we turned to experts in the Municipal Court in the City of Birmingham, Alabama: Andra D. Sparks, presiding judge; Mankinta Holloway, court administrator; and Melanie Colston, court administrator and clerk of court. Siloed services loom large as a chief impediment to complementary safety net services. The Birmingham Municipal Court has worked to dismantle traditional silos by developing processes and systems that reach across organizational boundaries. This includes collaborating with local mental health and education providers to prevent individuals from facing criminal prosecution and to facilitate effective treatments to prevent recurring court appearances. Reconstructing the social safety net will depend, in part, on incorporating partners like court systems that operate outside conventional safety net systems. The conversation, led by Susan Moffitt, occurred on November 14, 2022, and has been edited for length.

  PublisherDOI

• Policymaker and Practitioner Perspectives and Insights from Colorado: An Interview with Dr. Ki’i Powell, Ian McMahon, Michael Martinez-Schiferl, Rebecca Balu, and Samantha O’Neill Dunbar

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2023-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  What are key barriers that prevent complementary safety net services? How are states and localities navigating those barriers? For policymaker and practitioner perspectives on these questions, we turned to experts in the Colorado Department of Human Services: Dr. Ki’i Powell, former director of the Office of Economic Security; Ian McMahon, director of the Division of Economic and Workforce Support; Michael Martinez-Schiferl, former operations manager in the Division of Economic and Workforce Support; Rebecca Balu, employment and training manager; and Samantha O’Neill Dunbar, budget and legislative manager in the Office of Economic Security. Colorado has sought to overcome administrative burdens by developing shared-eligibility systems that allow individuals to apply for multiple services through a common application process. This approach has enhanced user experiences from the perspective of service recipients, but it shifts administrative burdens to the implementing agencies, who face complex data demands arising from federal and state-level policy design and strained workforce capacities. Colorado’s experiences underscore how resolving administrative burdens depends on federal and state policy action above and beyond agency-level adjustments. The conversation, led by Susan Moffitt, occurred on November 29, 2022, and has been edited for length.

  PublisherDOI

• 4. Problems of Policy Spillover

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Reform can be cause for celebration: transformations can address parts of public problems. Yet even in auspicious conditions, new policies and practices collide with inherited terrains and can spill over in different directions. As reforms succeed at accomplishing aspects of their aspirations, they can spread in unanticipated directions: covering additional topics, additional populations, additional geographies. In doing so, they can exceed the infrastructure that originally helped them operate. Chapter 4 examines these problems of policy spillover. When organizational components are well connected and have stakeholder support for the work, reform ideas can spread. Yet, when spreading reforms require entirely different infrastructures, they can yield policy making that focuses on procedure. Chapter 4 examines policy spillovers nationally through the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and at the state level in California’s approach to standards development and Tennessee’s Response to Intervention policies developed to identify students for special education.

  PublisherDOI

• 2. Inherited Terrains

  2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The US has saddled its public schools with civic, economic, and social responsibilities while raising the stakes on what it expects students to learn and teachers to teach. These responsibilities have not arisen from a coherent vision or systematic plan at any level of governance. Instead, they have emerged from ongoing reforms, from the absence of reform in non-educational sectors, from durable institutional legacies, and from residual debris leftover from prior reform efforts. Chapter 2 examines the inherited terrains that emerge from the combination of reforms, adjacent policies, institutional legacies, and prior policy debris. It also analyzes how these terrains have emerged throughout the course of American political, economic, and social development. These inherited terrains highlight not only why public education has been central to the American economy, social safety net, and democratic governance, but also how they constrain and create problems for American public education.

  PublisherDOI

• Policymaker and Practitioner Perspectives: Insights from Ohio: An Interview with Dr. Wendy Grove and Jennifer Vargo

  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science · 2023-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  What supports do children need? What lessons have been learned over the past decade to provide complementary services? For policymaker and practitioner perspectives on these questions, we turned to experts in the Ohio Department of Education: Dr. Wendy Grove, the director of the Office of Early Learning and School Readiness; and Jennifer Vargo, the former director of the Office of Whole Child Supports. To identify children’s needs, Ohio has developed processes to elevate and learn from families’ voices and lived experiences. Those insights have contributed to Ohio’s cross-agency collaborations to support whole-child approaches both through policymaking and integrated data systems. Collaborations also point toward areas of ongoing need, including more investment in early childhood supports and preschool. The conversation, led by Susan Moffitt, occurred on December 2, 2022, and has been edited for length.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David K. Cohen

  19 shared

• Paul Manna

  Ohio University

  18 shared

• Jessica Trounstine

  Vanderbilt University

  16 shared

• Eileen McDonagh

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  16 shared

• Colin D. Moore

  Berkeley College

  16 shared

• Joe Bowersox

  San Francisco Public Library

  16 shared

• Jennifer Griffin

  16 shared

• John Louis Meyer

  San Francisco Public Library

  16 shared

Labs

• Realizing Rights LabPI

Awards & honors

• Herbert Simon Award from the Midwest Political Science Assoc…