Population Studies and Training Center

Alexandra Cooperstock is an award winning sociologist who explores how ethnoracial and social class inequalities are produced and perpetuated in neighborhoods and schools, and how policy contexts influence the neighborhood-school nexus and create stratified opportunity structures. This work contributes to research on inequality and stratification, the sociology of education, community and urban sociology, public policy, and the field of social and spatial demography. Her research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, and the National Science Foundation. She has been published in general interest, special interest, and interdisciplinary journals including Social Forces, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, City & Community, and Frontiers in Education as well as the Oxford Handbook of Family Policy and a forthcoming edited volume on Contemporary Issues in Rural Education Finance.

Alexandra was formerly a K-12 teacher. She worked in both public and charter schools and was awarded Teach for America's Sue Lehmann Excellence in Teacher Leadership Award. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with a minor in Demography from Cornell University, and a B.A. in Sociology and Women's Studies from the University of Michigan where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.