Jack Dougherty's teaching and research draw connections between educational history, policy, and practice in the United States. He received his B.A. in philosophy from Swarthmore College, taught high school social studies in Newark, New Jersey, then earned his Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jack's prize-winning book, More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee, explores how three generations of civil rights activism changed from the 1930s to the present in the urban North.

In his introductory course, Educ 200: Analyzing Schools, students compare and contrast theories on learning and inequality while working as participant-observers in urban school classrooms in Hartford. The middle-level Educ 300: Education Reform - Past & Presentclass investigates historical sources and contemporary efforts to understand what has --and has not -- changed from the mid-nineteenth-century Common School era to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Students working with Jack in the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools project have conducted historical, qualitative, and quantitative research on how public schools and private housing came together to shape metropolitan Hartford over the past century. Their most widely viewed products include Missing the Goal: A Visual Guide to Sheff v O'Neill School Desegregation and SmartChoices: A Digital Guide to Public School Choice in the Greater Hartford Region. To date, over 15 undergraduates affiliated with the project have co-authored publications and/or presented research papers at national conferences.