Student Profile: Lauren Lowinger, EMP Class of 2023

“Why, in the United States, does one’s education and future trajectory depend on your zip code or the color of your skin?”

This was the question that Lauren Lowinger, EMP Class of 2023, asked herself more than ten years ago while staffing a panel discussing education policy in the United States in her role as a program coordinator at the Aspen Institute in Colorado.

“It wasn’t clear if the panelists had firsthand experience in classrooms or schools, yet they were talking about problems in the education system. I began to wonder who is making education decisions for large groups of the population, and that spurred me to do two things: learn about education policy and learn what was going on for educators.”

Lowinger later decided to head east, where she served as a high school special education teacher through the New Teacher Project's New York Teaching Fellows Program while earning her Master of Science in Education at Long Island University part-time.

After two years in New York, Lowinger moved back to her home city of Chicago, where she taught math at Muchin College Prep, part of the Noble Network of Charter Schools.

“I enjoyed being in the classroom, but I wanted to understand what was happening at the higher level of schools. How are students getting enrolled in school? How is access being determined? What are barriers to education in Chicago?”

Lowinger joined KIPP Ascend Primary as the director of operations, where she has now worked for more than five years. Working as an administrator, she said, has also shown her the large systemic issues that create barriers for students trying to get an education, such as transportation and community safety.

“I see all of the different policies and institutional factors that play a role in the kids' lives. For example, do students get bus cards to come to school every day? And if not, why don’t we provide bus cards to families to get their kids to school?” she said. “I am at Harris to expand my impact. I want to use quantitative analysis to determine what educational programs are successful and how those programs can be scaled. I want to be able to use data to assess what things are working and what things aren’t so we can reduce those barriers to help people in underserved communities access education.”

During her first quarter in the Evening Master’s Program, Lowinger said she was able to put her coursework into immediate action. “I had a project in Professor Katherine Baird’s Data Analytics I course which focused on the impact school nurses have on access to healthcare for students. I was able to use that project to advocate whether our school should use COVID funding to hire a school nurse. I got to think about the problem in a way I never thought about it before,” she said. “Through Professor Baird’s course, I learned how to collect data that was actually readily available in a way I never realized.”

Lowinger said that before she was an administrator, she was initially doubtful that policy could have such an impact on individuals.  “However, I am able to align the academic experience I’m getting from Harris with my work experience and see how policy can support positive outcomes on the individual level, which is extremely gratifying.”