University of Oregon College of Education

David T. Conley, Ph.D., directs the Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR) <http://cepr.uoregon.edu/> . His areas of teaching and research include the high school-to-college transition, standards-based education, systemic school reform, educational governance, and adequacy funding models.

As director of CEPR, he oversees a range of grants and contracts from organizations such as the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the College Board, and numerous state education departments and local educational agencies. Conley has also developed adequacy-funding models for Oregon, Hawaii, and Washington.

In 2003, Dr. Conley completed a groundbreaking three-year research project to identify the knowledge and skills necessary for college readiness called Standards for Success (funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Universities and the Pew Charitable Trust). This project analyzed course content at a range of American research universities to develop the "Knowledge and Skills for University Success" standards. In 2005, he published College Knowledge: What It Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready, based on this research. He has published in numerous journal articles, technical reports, conference papers, book chapters, and books. His next book, available spring 2010, is entitled College and Career Ready, and summarizes recent research he has conducted on this topic. He also published Who Governs Our Schools? (2003), which analyzes changes in educational policy and governance structures at the federal, state, and local levels.
 
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.