Erica Frankenberg is a professor of education and demography in the College of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests focus on racial desegregation and inequality in K-12 schools, and the connections between school segregation and other metropolitan policies. She has written extensively about centering civil rights within an education policy research agenda at the federal level and has unique expertise in spatial and segregation analysis in schools. Given demographic, legal, and political changes, her work focuses on policy design and extralegal factors affecting school segregation. This includes the extent to which boundary lines between and within districts divide populations and students; how the design of school choice policies relates to racial and economic segregation of students; studying the intersection of housing and school composition; and examining the complex patterns of segregation and inequality emerging in suburban school districts. At Penn State, Dr. Frankenberg was the co-founder and now director of Penn State’s Center for Education and Civil Rights; she is an associate director of the Social Science Research Institute. Dr. Frankenberg has published widely in education journals, law reviews, and has co-edited five books. She received an early career award from Division L of AERA in 2014 and was inducted as an AERA Fellow in 2025. She has served as an expert witness or consulted with approximately a dozen districts about desegregation. Her research has been cited in several federal court decisions, and she regularly assists policymakers at all levels around policy to further integration.
Education
- Ed.D., Administration, Planning, and Social Policy – Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Ed.M., Administration, Planning, and Social Policy, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- A.B., Education Policy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
Areas of Expertise
- Civil Rights in Education
- School Choice and equity
- Desegregation law
- Housing-Education nexus
