Biography

Dr. Kathryn E. Wiley, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the School of Education at Howard University. She is an expert in school discipline, climate, and safety, with a focus on race and educational opportunity. She uses multiple methods and a historical lens to understand contemporary education policies in the context of longstanding, racialized inequalities. 

Dr. Wiley’s research has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Review of Educational Research, Race Ethnicity and Education, and The Urban Review, among others. 

An avid public scholar, she is passionate about education as a public good, one essential to a multiracial and economically just democracy. She is a member of the American Educational Research Association and recently served as a 2025 AERA Congressional Fellow. 

She has a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Colorado Boulder and is a proud community college graduate originally from Dayton, Ohio.Recent Publications

* co-authored with a current or former student mentored by Dr. Wiley 

Wiley, K., & Middleton, J.* (2025). “Uses of history” in research on racialized school discipline. Review of Educational Research. Online first. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654325132659

Lucas, I.*, Wiley, K., & Helms Pickett, S. (2025). Say it loud: Rhythms of resistance in a climate of compliance. Journal of College and Character, 26(1), 96-108. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2194587X.2024.2439592 

Wiley, K. E., Williams III, J. A., Simmons, S.* (2025). From slow reform to meaningful abolition: Exclusionary school discipline and the need for a new paradigm. Texas Education Review, 13(1), 215-233. https://doi.org/10.26153/tsw/58396 

Williams III, J. A., & Wiley, K. E. (2025). A new school discipline fulcrum: Identifying and rectifying. Texas Education Review, 13(1), 106-111. https://doi.org/10.26153/tsw/58402 

Wiley, K., & Reed, D.S. (2024). From path dependence to alternative paths. History of Education Quarterly, 64, 377-380. doi:10.1017/heq.2024.35

Zabala, C., Somerville, K., & Wiley, K. (2024). Challenging majoritarian “reform” narratives of school resource officers: A critical examination of policy recommendations. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis  https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737231212168  

Wiley, K., *Townsend, C., *Trujillo, M., & Anyon, Y. (2022). Deep punishment and internal colony: a critical analysis of in-school suspension rooms inside two racially “integrated” middle schools. The Urban Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-021-00629-8

Anyon, Y., Wiley, K., Samimi, C., & *Trujillo, M. (2021). Sent out or sent home: Understanding racial disparities across suspension types from Critical Race Theory and Quantcrit perspectives. Race Ethnicity and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2021.2019000

Wiley, K. (2021). A Tale of Two Logics: Racial Disparities and School Discipline in a Mostly-White Middle School. American Journal of Education, Vol. 127(2), p. 163-192. DOI: 10.1086/712084