Scott F Abernathy

Scott Abernathy was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. While an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, he volunteered for three months with Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India.

After graduation, oping to do service work closer to home, Scott worked as an on-street counselor with homeless adolescents in Boston, MA, with The Bridge, a non-profit multi-service youth agency.

Scott then received a Master of Curriculum and Instruction and taught fourth and seventh grades in Wisconsin public schools. Hoping to learn more about the underlying systems that drove the educational outcomes he was trying to change, Scott completed an M.P.A in domestic policy and then a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.

Scott is now an associate professor of Political Science and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is also the author of School Choice and the Future of American Democracy and No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools, both from University of Michigan Press.

While Scott says that being a "streetworker" was the most transforming job he has ever had, this textbook, and the chance to teach students--not in a subway stop, a squat, or a classroom, but through writing--is pretty cool as well.