Education Policy Initiative (EPI) Predoctoral Fellow alum, Jordy Berne (PhD ‘25), was recognized by the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) with the 2026 Jean Flanigan Outstanding Dissertation Award for his research on Michigan's third-grade reading law, Michigan's Transitional Kindergarten program, and Georgia's
universal Pre-K program. Berne used quasi-experimental methods in his dissertation entitled, "Economic Analyses of Early Childhood Education."
The Jean Flanigan Dissertation Award carries a $1,000 prize and was presented at the annual AEFP conference on March 19 in Chicago.
The AEFP Awards Committee, when evaluating Berne's dissertation, considered criteria including whether it was a noteworthy contribution of knowledge to the field and the novelty or creativity of his work in terms of research question(s), methods, or findings.
Berne is an alum of U-M's interdisciplinary Causal Inference in Education Policy Research (CIEPR) Predoctoral Fellowship program. He was advised by Brian Jacob and co-advised by Christina Weiland. Along with Jacob and Weiland, Michael Mueller and Ana Reynoso served on his dissertation committee.
Berne is currently an associate economist at the RAND Corporation, where he researches the drivers of economic opportunity, with an emphasis on education policy, childhood circumstances, and social safety net programs. He specializes in causal inference methods and recently studied public preschool programs and K-12 literacy reforms.
Read more about the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) awards.