Chloe Latham Sikes

Chloe Latham Sikes, Ph.D., is IDRA’s deputy director of policy. She brings nearly a decade of experience of working in both K-12 and higher education settings, as well as in educational research and advocacy organizations. She focuses on IDRA’s state policy priorities for advancing equity in public education, including school finance, accountability, bilingual education, and issues of local school district governance. She has previously worked with education advocacy coalitions during Texas legislative sessions on issues ranging from access to in-state tuition for undocumented students to increasing bilingual education funding and to enhancing teacher preparation programs.

Dr. Latham Sikes earned her doctoral in the educational policy and planning program at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation examined how school district leaders understand and respond to the effects of immigration policies on their school communities. Her other research interests include student and community engagement in education, the intersections of immigration and educational policy, bilingual education funding, and socio-political influences on the education system and students. Her work has been published in the Oxford Handbook of US K-12 Law, Texas Education Review, and International Journal of Educational Management (forthcoming), among other publications. In 2021, she coauthored with Chandra Kring Villanueva, Creating a More Bilingual Texas – A Closer Look at Bilingual Education in the Lone Start State.

Dr. Latham Sikes earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and global development studies from Grinnell College. She also holds a master’s of arts degree in cultural studies in education from UT-Austin.