Manhattan Institute Adds to Its Education Team

NEW YORK, NY – The Manhattan Institute is pleased to announce that three new adjunct fellows, Wai Wah Chin, Kathleen Porter-Magee, and Michael Hartney, have joined its education policy team.

Wai Wah Chin is the founding president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, an all-volunteer organization that promotes equal opportunity in education, playing a fundamental role in the fight for New York City’s specialized schools against discriminatory policies. A graduate of Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, Chin is a relentless advocate for the Chinese American community, with a professional background in private equity. In a recent City Journal piece, she made the case that neighborhoods of every race and ethnicity, in New York City and around the country, need more schooling options. She also recently applauded the decision at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to re-embrace standardized tests. Her work at the Manhattan Institute will advance her support of school choice and also address issues faced by Asian Americans in New York.

Kathleen Porter-Magee is the superintendent of Partnership Schools, a network of nine urban Catholic schools in Cleveland, Harlem, and the South Bronx. A two-decade champion of school choice, she offered in a previous report for the Manhattan Institute important contextualization of the education-reform debates of the past twenty years, suggesting that Catholic values have enabled Catholic education to combine the rigor of charter schools with a holistic outlook on students’ long-term outcomes. She has also commented on recent Supreme Court decisions that affect faith-based schools. And she contributed, along with Chin, to a recent discussion hosted by City Journal’s 10 Blocks podcast on the future of education reform in the city. She looks forward to continuing her scholarship on Catholic education, school choice, instruction, and curriculum for both the Manhattan Institute and City Journal.

Michael Hartney is an assistant professor of political science at Boston College, where his research lies at the intersection of state and local politics, interest groups (particularly public-sector unions), and public policy. A talented statistician, he recently applied regression analyses to explore the role parental interactions with local school boards played in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, and in the recent school-board recall election in San Francisco. Hartney’s analyses found that school closures contributed to Governor Youngkin’s success in Virginia, and that discontent over progressive overreach in education contributed to the ousting of three school-board officials in California. Relatedly, Hartney’s most recent issue brief for the Manhattan Institute made the case for on-cycle local elections as a means for promoting democratic participation and mitigating conflict between school boards and their constituents. His forthcoming book, How Policies Make Interest Groups: Governments, Unions, and American Education, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in July 2022.

“We strive to bring unique voices and individuals to our work on education,” said Ray Domanico, who directs education policy for the Manhattan Institute. “We are proud to be joined by a former parent leader who is now a tireless advocate for her growing community; the leader of a groundbreaking school turnaround organization who is improving and growing urban Catholic schools; and a talented thinker and academic who seeks to bring his skills to the work of educational improvement.”

To learn more about the Manhattan Institute’s education experts, visit us here.