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Mara Tieken

Mara Casey Tieken received her Doctorate of Education from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University in 2011. Her research focuses on racial and educational equity in rural schools and communities. Her dissertation, an ethnographic study of two rural Arkansas communities, examines the roles that rural schools play in rural towns–specifically, how they shape a particular community and how they shape the racial landscapes of these towns. Before beginning graduate work, she taught third grade and adult basic education in rural Tennessee.

Tieken was recently involved in a large-scale study of community organizing for education reform; she co-authored a case study of a rural organizing group that is published in A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform. She also co-authored Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools, a study of five high-performing urban charter schools, and has an essay about teaching antiracist history in all-white classrooms included in Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real about Race in Schools.

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