Vicki E. Murray is Senior Policy Fellow, Education Studies, at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI). Dr. Murray’s research focuses on education reform measures to improve academic accountability at all levels, promote a competitive education climate, and increase parents’ control over their children’s education. Her research areas include district and charter school choice, early education, education tax credits and savings accounts, English Language Learners, special education, standards and testing, teacher pay and quality, vouchers, higher education reform, and education finance, both K-12 and postsecondary.

Dr. Murray is the former director of the Goldwater Institute Center for Educational Opportunity in Phoenix, Arizona, and the author of more than a dozen education policy studies. She has advised the U.S. Department of Education on public school choice and higher education reform. She has also advised education policy makers in nearly 30 states, provided expert testimony before state legislative education committees, and served on two national accountability task forces. Dr. Murray’s research helped advance four parental choice voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs in Arizona in 2006, and she provided expert affidavits as part of the successful legal defense of choice programs for low-income, foster-care, and disabled children. Dr. Murray’s research and writings on market education policy have been widely published and cited in state and national media and research outlets, as well as outlets in Canada, Great Britain, Mexico, and New Zealand.

Prior to her career in education policy, Dr. Murray taught college-level courses in American politics, English composition and rhetoric, and early British literature. She has lectured at universities nationwide, including the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, and she has presented her academic research at annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, the Southwest Social Science Association, the Northeast, New England, and Midwest Political Science Associations. Dr. Murray received her Ph.D. in politics from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas, where she was an Earhart Foundation Fellow.