Amy Stuart Wells is Professor of Educational Policy in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, at University of California, Los Angeles, where she directs The Charter School Study.  Her research explores the cultural and economic underpinning of conservative educational policies.  Wells also researches the outcomes of conservative educational initiatives such as school choice and the charter school movement, in particular the differential race and class outcomes of such policies.  Two of her  recent publications are Stepping Over the Color Line:  African-American Students in White Suburban Schools (with Robert L. Crain), 1997 and Beyond the Rhetoric of Charter School Reform in California:  A Study of Ten California School Districts, 1998.  Forthcoming this year (with Alejandro Lopez), is "Charter Schools as Postmodern Paradox:  Rethinking Social Stratification in an Age of Deregulated School Choice," in the Harvard Educational Review.