Prestigious honor recognizes research excellence of faculty
The American Educational Research Association has announced the selection of Jerome V. D’Agostino and James L. Moore III of the College of Education and Human Ecology as Fellows in recognition of their distinguished and sustained research achievements.
As 2021 Fellows, they were nominated by their peers, selected by the Fellows Committee and approved by the AERA Council, the association’s elected governing body. They will be inducted in September during a virtual ceremony.
“I am extremely proud of Drs. D’Agostino and Moore,” said Lori Patton Davis, professor and chair of the Department of Educational Studies, the tenure-initiating unit for the two faculty. “Both are beyond deserving given their longstanding research achievements. Their recognition as AERA Fellows is among the association’s highest honors and is a testament to their tremendous contributions to educational research that has and continues to make a difference within diverse educational settings and communities.
D’Agostino nominated by the late Professor Robert Slavin
Professor Jerome V. D’Agostino has made major contributions to his field of quantitative research, evaluation and measurement. He is known for developing new techniques, widely cited and used by other researchers, to document test score validity. These techniques include innovative approaches to study important aspects of learning, such as how students respond to specific teaching practices and how to determine the state of students’ mental processes during high-stakes tests – for instance, standards-based assessments and licensure exams.
D’Agostino also is known for conducting large-scale meta-analyses of education programs for children. One was conducted on Reading Recovery, an internationally used literacy intervention for first-grade students. He synthesized the results of 16 studies and showed the intervention’s positive effects on children’s reading skills.
D’Agostino also has contributed significant knowledge to the field by studying long-term trends, including his examination of the literacy abilities of first-grade U.S. students over a 12-year period. His findings from one study that he conducted with colleague Emily Rodgers, the college’s professor of reading and literacy in early and middle childhood education, showed that children entering first grade in 2013 had significantly better reading skills than similar students just 12 years earlier.
From 2010 to 2015, he and Rodgers conducted a nationwide scale-up of Reading Recovery. The project received a $45.6 million federal grant and $10 million in donor contributions. The reading intervention was shown, by an independent study, to be three times more effective than similar reading programs. More than 62,000 young students received the intervention, putting them on track to catch up with their peers in reading.
Most recently, D’Agostino, with Rodgers, received an $8 million, four-year federal grant to refine and expand a literacy intervention for students ages 6 to 9 with Individual Education Plans in reading. A prior, three-year grant to test and refine the intervention proved that it was significantly more effective than using the usual methods of special education in helping students catch up with their peers in reading.
“Jerry D’Agostino has garnered over $70 million in government and foundation grant funding,” said his nominator, the late Robert Slavin, Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, “and most of those dollars have gone directly to marginalized children to improve their reading skills. His scholarship has directly improved the lives and opportunities of youth and families.”
Often-quoted Moore deemed a national thought leader
James L. Moore III is a professor of counselor education and EHE Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the college. He is also the first executive director of Ohio State’s Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, as well as Ohio State’s vice provost of diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer.
Moore is internationally known for his research agenda focused on school counseling, gifted education, urban education, higher education, multicultural education/counseling and STEM education. He was the first African American full professor in the college’s highly ranked Counselor Education program and the college’s first African American distinguished professor.
During the course of his trailblazing career, Moore has received more than $28 million in grants, contracts and gifts for his research and programming. He has investigated best and innovative practices to support the academic success of Black boys and young men.
His often-cited publications have pushed the field’s current thinking about the social and education experiences, outcomes and potential for students of color. Since 2018, he has been cited annually by Education Week as one of the 200 most influential education scholars and researchers in the United States.
Notably, from 2015-2017, he was the first non-STEM specialist to be made a program director for the Broadening Participation in Engineering Programs in the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. In this role, he made grant awards to programs around the nation that supported participation by underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering and math programs.
In 2018, Moore was named the university’s vice provost for Diversity and Inclusion and chief diversity officer, having previously served as interim vice provost. As vice provost, he manages multiple, nationally recognized programs and units while contributing to the academic and diversity equity and inclusion missions of the university.
Also in 2018, Missy and Bob Weiler of Columbus, Ohio, established in his honor the Dr. James L. Moore III Scholars Program to support underrepresented students transferring from Columbus State Community College to The Ohio State University.
A national thought leader for research innovation and practice translation, Moore is frequently quoted in popular publications, such as Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. He is invited to serve organizations, such as his recent appointment to a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, DC. Most recently, he received the 2021 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award from the American Council on Education.
“Dr. Moore and his collaborators have identified a number of important interventions to help reverse underachievement and low achievement of educationally vulnerable students,” said Jonathan Plucker, the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University. “His work in university central administration is directly informed by his research, providing him with opportunities to increase the number of those students who achieve high levels of learning and life success.”
