Taylor Enoch-Stevens

PhD Granting Institution: University of Southern California

Department: Educational Policy Studies and Practice

College: College of Education

Mentor: Melanie Bertrand, Ph.D.

Research Proposal: A Theory of Racialized School Funding in K-12 Schools

Taylor Enoch-Stevens is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California studying Urban Education Policy with a K-12 concentration. During her time at USC, Taylor was the recipient of five prestigious fellowships and published four peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters. Most recently, Taylor was awarded the Mellon Mays Dissertation Fellowship from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation).

Taylor’s research examines racially equitable policy design and implementation in K-12 education with a focus on resource allocation, as well as the role of institutional agents in shaping racially equitable K-12 environments. As part of her dissertation research, Taylor studied the reallocation of school district dollars previously used for School Resource Officers (SROs), or school police, in order to determine how funds were reallocated, the conditions shaping those efforts, and the racial equity implications of these policy decisions.

During her fellowship, Taylor will build upon her dissertation research to develop a theory of racialized school funding. To develop this theory, she will conduct a large-scale, mixed methods review of relevant school finance literature, including school finance reforms, race-conscious legal analyses, and critical analyses of funding policies. Blending both quantitative and qualitative synthesis methods, she will consider the extent to which race has shaped school funding policies and begin the theory development process, with the goal of creating a research tool that is useful for both scholars and practitioners of school finance.

In her letter of support, mentor Dr. Melanie Bertrand, Associate Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Practice, wrote, “Ms. Enoch-Stevens’s scholarly focus and her productivity are both exceptional. Her scholarship focuses on race and K-12 education, educational policies, and school finance. Her dissertation research explores a widespread occurrence in school districts across the United States since 2020, namely the reallocation of funding originally earmarked for school police. With the support of a $30,000 dissertation grant, Ms. Enoch-Stevens studied 15 school districts through interviews, observations, and document analysis to explore whether and to what extent the reallocation of SRO funding advanced racial equity goals. This study is much needed in the field of education, analyzing a nation-wide policy phenomenon that has not, to my knowledge, been the subject of any published, at- scale research. Thus, Ms. Enoch-Stevens’s scholarship will not only fill a yawning gap in the research, but also support efforts to advance racial equity in education.”