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Dr. Conley is Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership in the College of Education, University of Oregon. He is the founder and director of the Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR) at the University of Oregon, and founder and chief executive officer of the Educational Policy Improvement Center, a 501(c)3 not-for profit educational research organization. CEPR and EPIC conduct research on issues related to college readiness, college and high school course content analysis, high school-college alignment and transition, and large-scale diagnosis and assessment of college readiness. Dr. Conley serves on numerous technical and advisory panels, consults with educational agencies nationally and internationally, and is a frequent speaker at national and regional meetings of education professionals and policymakers.
Agencies with which CEPR and EPIC have recent or current working relationships include the US Department of Education; the College Board; the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board; the Maine Department of Education; the South Carolina Higher Education Coordinating Commission; the Washington Education Association; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Carnegie Corporation; and numerous school districts and new school networks.
In 2003 Dr. Conley completed a groundbreaking three-year research project to identify the knowledge and skills necessary for college readiness. Standards for Success was funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Universities (AAU) and The Pew Charitable Trusts. This project analyzed course content at a range of American research universities to develop the Knowledge and Skills for University Success standards. His previous book, published in 2005 and based on this research, is College Knowledge: What It Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready. His most recent book, College and Career Ready, published in early 2010, contains a conceptual model, key guiding principles and detailed lessons learned from 38 outstanding high schools, all designed to help schools prepare more students for postsecondary success.
Over the past 14 years Conley has received over $15 million in grants and contracts from federal and state governments, national education organizations, and foundations to conduct research on a range of educational policy issues. He has published the results of this research and other studies in numerous journal articles, technical reports, conference papers, book chapters, and books, including Who Governs Our Schools?, which analyzes changes in educational policy and governance structures at the federal, state, and local levels, and College Knowledge.
He received a B.A. with honors in Social Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his master's degree in Social, Multicultural, Bilingual Foundations of Education and doctoral degree in Curriculum, Administration, and Supervision at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Before joining the faculty of the University of Oregon in 1989, he spent a total of 20 years in Colorado and California as a school-level and central office administrator in several districts, an executive in a state education department, and as a teacher in two public multicultural alternative schools.
