Smrekar's work has shaped desegregation plans and school choice policies throughout her 34-year career at Vanderbilt Peabody College.
By Jenna Somers
Claire Smrekar was well acquainted with Cleveland, Mississippi. She had traveled to the 12,000-person town several times to interview families and school district leaders, and to conduct extensive demographic analyses as the expert witness for the U.S. Department of Justice in the trial to desegregate the Cleveland School District. The year was 2015, 61 years after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled race-based segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education.
Smrekar had never given a deposition or served as an expert witness, but by the end of trial, her testimony resulted in the DOJ winning the case. The court's ruling aligned with Smrekar's recommendations for desegregating the district in ways that benefit all students and their families.
"I treated my testimony as a teaching opportunity, always grounding my responses in the research," said Smrekar, associate professor of leadership, policy and organizations at Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development.
"I treated my testimony as a teaching opportunity, always grounding my responses in the research."
Working with the DOJ's Civil Rights Division has been a mainstay of Smrekar's career for the past decade. Her expertise has helped shape desegregation policies for school districts transitioning from court-ordered desegregation to consent decrees (settlements).
Smrekar takes pride in this work. It typically does not appear in scholarly journals, but it has a direct impact on public policy and discourse. "Contributing to the scholarly community is important, but I also want my work to penetrate the public square. We should always be mindful of the community of taxpayers and citizens, and local and state policymakers, so I've offered policy guidance, written commentary in newspapers and spoken with news media throughout my career," Smrekar said.
A legacy at Peabody
In December Smrekar will retire, cementing a legacy at Peabody College defined by 34 years of innovative scholarship, public policy impact and dedicated teaching.
Among her noteworthy accomplishments, about 25 years ago Smrekar contributed to a new wave of scholarship that demonstrates the value of qualitative research to inform public policies. She spearheaded development of the capstone project in Peabody's doctor of education program and directed the Peabody Scholars honors program. Since 2020, she has served as the editor of the Peabody Journal of Education and will continue in this role while retired.
"Claire has been an important leader at Peabody throughout her career," said Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development. "I am grateful for her tireless effort to strengthen our programs, inspire our students and ensure our discoveries leave a lasting impact on families and communities."
Smrekar's scholarship has generated important discoveries on the social context of education policies, namely the impact of desegregation plans and school choice policies on families, schools and neighborhoods. Early in her career, she studied Kentucky's school-based social services model, which recognized the importance of wrap-around health and social services in promoting family-school connections. Her latest work examines the effects of private school markets and demographic trends on school voucher plans. She has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Danforth Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation and others.
Smrekar has written two books and co-edited another. In the Impact of School Choice and Community: In the Interest of Families and Schools, published in 1995 by State University of New York Press, Smrekar examines parental involvement in schools and the importance of parents' social networks for connecting schools and communities.
Smrekar's second book, School Choice in Urban America: Magnet Schools and the Pursuit of Equity, was published in 1999 by Teachers College Press, and co-authored with Ellen Goldring, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Education and Leadership and distinguished research dean. The book explores the policies and practices of magnet schools, a school choice method intended to desegregate schools and create equitable opportunities for students. This book-and Smrekar's scholarship on magnet schools broadly-reveals the promises and limitations of magnet schools for achieving equity through public school choice.
Smrekar says that magnet schools have the greatest chance of being effective as methods for desegregation when they are placed in locations near where parents work, particularly near large employers and office parks, since parents value the convenience of being able to drop off their child to school on their way to work and to visit schools for events.
Smrekar and Goldring also co-edited From the Courtroom to the Classroom: The Shifting Landscape of School Desegregation, published in 2009 by Harvard Education Press. The book examines the history of school desegregation from early court orders to district-level practices.
Unveiling the success of DoDEA schools
If a single body of research defines her career, Smrekar points to her 2001 and 2007 congressionally mandated reports on the Department of Defense Education Activity Schools. DoDEA schools educate the children of America's servicemembers. The Pentagon operates these schools, which are located on military bases primarily throughout the South since they were intended to help desegregate the military following World War II.
For decades, these schools have boasted some of the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as "the nation's report card." Moreover, the achievement gap between white and Black and Latino students is the smallest in the country.
States and school districts across the country could learn from DoDEA schools, Smrekar argues. She found that bottom-up discretion and authority at the school level combined with top-down financial and technical resources from the Pentagon was the key to these schools' success. They were trusted to govern themselves and to provide a quality education, and the Pentagon ensured they had the means to do it.
Smrekar also found that DoDEA teachers were part of a union and were paid on average about 15 percent more than neighboring school district teachers. Most DoDEA teachers also held a master's degree or higher and received regular professional development training.
Smrekar's research on DoDEA schools gained wide recognition. She presented in front of a panel of 300 Congressional staffers in Washington, D.C. and was interviewed by Lesley Stahl for CBS News' 60 Minutes broadcast as well as leading national newspapers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. Journalists and Smrekar's colleagues continue to contact her about the reports 20 years after she released the last one.
A love of teaching
Smrekar's passion for her research is matched by a deep love of teaching. "Teaching is important to me, and it was important to me to come to a place like Peabody where teaching is honored, respected and supported to such a strong degree," Smrekar said.
"Teaching is important to me, and it was important to me to come to…Peabody where teaching is honored, respected and supported to such a strong degree."
She has enjoyed the various challenges and rewards that come with teaching a range of students, from working professionals in the Ed.D. program to undergraduate students in a seminar-style upper-level class. She says Vanderbilt students have always been exceptional, but the evolving makeup of student populations has improved classroom discussions as Vanderbilt has sought to recruit students from different backgrounds and from all regions of the country. Students are exposed to different viewpoints, ideas and life experiences they might not otherwise encounter, which catalyzes rich, complicated classroom discussions.
Students remember and apply lessons from these discussions later in their careers. Jerome Morris, E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Urban Education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and president-elect of the American Educational Research Association (2025-2026), was Smrekar's first Ph.D. student. He recalled the impact of Smrekar's ability to intertwine research and teaching.
"Claire modeled to me that teaching and research are interconnected. She not only lectured but also led research studies, enabling her to create new knowledge that impacted policy and that she would eventually share with her students. As a student, teaching assistant, and graduate research assistant with Claire, I, along with many former students, greatly benefited from her brilliance and guidance," Morris said.
"Claire modeled to me that teaching and research are interconnected…I, along with many former students, greatly benefited from her brilliance and guidance."
Many years after students graduate, Smrekar often hears back from them about the impact of her teaching. "I just find so much reward and fulfillment in these little notes," Smrekar said.
The Sterling Ranch Vanderbilt Partnership
Smrekar combined her love of teaching and school choice expertise on the Sterling Ranch community development project a transinstitutional effort with the School of Engineering. As co-principal investigator, she led the effort to develop a school for this new community in Colorado.
Eve Rifkin, director of Vanderbilt's online Ed.D. program in Leadership and Learning in Organizations and senior lecturer of leadership, policy and organizations, was an Ed.D. student of Smrekar's at the time. In her capstone project, she developed a model for the school that would highlight problem- and project-based learning anchored to the natural resources and ecology of the Colorado ranch lands.
Undergraduates from Smrekar's classes also participated in paid internships on the project. The development of the Sterling Ranch community remains ongoing, but the project offered an opportunity for professional and undergraduate students to apply their learning in a real-world context.
The future research of school choice vouchers
One of the reasons Smrekar values teaching is because she is educating some of tomorrow's scholars. To them, she passes the proverbial baton on one of the most salient issues in education policy: universal statewide school choice vouchers.
School choice vouchers were originally a provision for expanding access to quality schools for low-income children in failing schools. Over the past decade, several states have made these programs available to all students, with no restrictions on income levels. As states have passed universal statewide voucher programs, Smrekar has written commentary in news outlets and answered reporters' questions to help families make decisions about schooling options.
Smrekar says future research should seek to answer these questions: What is the purpose of school voucher programs? Who benefits? Who remains in low-performing schools? Which schools opt in, and which ones opt out? What is the quality of schools, and how is quality measured?
For the common good
When Smrekar testifies in a courtroom; speaks with families on a military base, in an urban community or on a ranch in Colorado; or teaches a class at Peabody, the same values drive her: a love of learning, a love of educating and a commitment to serving the common good. These are the values she saw at Peabody when she joined the faculty more than three decades ago. She credits the college's community for supporting her career.
"The culture of community and collegiality at Peabody is unmatched," Smrekar said. "It's a tradition at Peabody, and I have benefitted from that in unmeasurable ways."
