Jake Wertz

I'm a graduate student in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, interested in understanding how changes in America's schools shape the lives of children today. As a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences, I'm learning to conduct field experiments and analyze quasi-experimental data to evaluate how state- and district policies affect students.

My research is motivated and informed by eight years of experience as an entrepreneurial leader in urban education. In 2015, I founded Valiente College Prep, a charter public middle school in southeast Los Angeles, which now serves over 200 students. Before then, I created and directed the Urban Prep Fellows Program, an innovative mentoring-focused fellowship for recent college graduates serving in the nation's first network of all-boys charter public high schools, located on the South and West Sides of Chicago. I graduated with a BS in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University in 2009.

Department of Sociology

Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences

University of Wisconsin - Madison