John Fredericks

John M. (Jack) Fredericks is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy and Evaluation at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation. His research looks at how schools and school systems are held accountable — and who gets left out when that accountability doesn't work as intended.

Jack studies three connected areas: how superintendents build their careers and what that means for the districts they lead, how school boards make decisions and use data, and how we measure poverty and funding needs in schools. Across all of this work, his goal stays the same — to understand whether the tools we use to judge schools are actually fair, and who they might be failing along the way.

Before starting his PhD, Jack spent five years teaching AP Literature in rural Mississippi, where he was named District Teacher of the Year. That experience — seeing firsthand how policy decisions play out in real classrooms — shapes how he approaches research today. He believes good policy work has to stay grounded in the everyday realities of teachers, students, and communities, not just in numbers on a spreadsheet.

Jack also brings a background in creative writing to his research, and he has published fiction alongside his academic work.

Outside his academic work, Jack serves as Vice President of Professional Development for ASU's Graduate and Professional Student Government, and he co-founded Precision Policy Partners, a consulting firm focused on education policy.