Joe Hawkins learned early how much trouble he could get into as an educational researcher, particularly when he reported problems in his high-performing but self-congratulatory school district in Montgomery County, Md.
In 1981, Hawkins, as an evaluation specialist, was the first researcher to identify publicly the district’s black-white achievement gap. When he and a colleague published their results in the College Board Review, a school board member asked why school employees were putting out negative information.
It has been like that his whole career, ending this year at age 68 with his retirement from the position of senior study director for the survey research firm Westat. Few people know his name, but Hawkins has made important discoveries on many issues and been a valuable resource for education writers like me.
He grew up in the Washington area, got a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Boston University and trained as a reading specialist at Howard University. He has an activist’s temperament. Few researchers have stuck their necks out as far as Hawkins has.
He became particularly notorious in 2001, shortly after he moved to Westat, when the Montgomery County Board of Education — for reasons that still make no sense to me — turned down a proposal by Hawkins and several brilliant Montgomery educators for the Jaime Escalante Public Charter School...
