The Chicago Public Education Fund

Charles M. Payne is the Interim Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public Schools. He is on leave from his position as the Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. His interests include urban education and school reform, social inequality, social change and modern African American history. His most recent books are So Much Reform, So Little Change (Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2008) which examines the persistence of failure in urban schools, and an anthology, Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of Education For Liberation (Teachers College Press, 2008), which is concerned with Freedom School–like education. He is also the author of Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure In Urban Education (1984) and I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement ( 1995).

Payne holds a bachelor's degree in Afro–American studies from Syracuse University and a doctorate in sociology from Northwestern.

Previous Research:
With the support of the Carnegie Scholar's Program, Charles Payne is doing a study of how school reform dialogue in other countries compares to the American situation. He is also conducting a study of the most productive urban school districts, work that is supported by an Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship. For 2010–11, he will be on leave serving as the acting executive director of the Woodlawn Children's Promise Community, an effort to dramatically improve youth outcomes in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago.