Leslie Santee Siskin

Leslie Santee Siskin, Research Professor at New York University/Steinhardt, is a sociologist of organizations and organizational change. An expert on the American high school, her research focuses on the structuring and restructuring of schools, on the sociocultural and political contexts of teachers' work, and, most recently, on issues of accountability, testing, and comprehensive school reform (The New Accountability). In a series of books and articles she has examined subject departments as sites where school structure, curriculum subjects, and teachers' lives intersect (Realms of Knowledge), and explored the possibility of alternative configurations (The Subjects in Question). Siskin is currently leading a federally funded research project on the International Baccalureate in Title I high schools, and has recently conducted two major studies: "Accountability and the High School," funded through the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, examines the interactions between external policies and internal practices in high schools; the federal "Comprehensive School Reform Design" project explores the prospects for whole school reform models as they encounter the comprehensive high school. Her prior research projects have included work with the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching (CRC), the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST), the Coalition of Essential Schools, and the Annenberg-funded New York Networks for School Renewal. A former teacher, administrator, and school board member, and still a parent, Siskin maintains an active interest in all aspects of school reform while teaching courses on the transformation of urban high schools, organizational change, and qualitative methods.