Idit Fast completed her dissertation at Rutgers University in 2019. She is currently an assistant professor at the department of education at Ben Gurion University, Israel. Her research looks at processes of educational policy implementation and their outcomes, and the intersection of policy implementation with social inequality. In her dissertation she studied how elementary public schools in New York City implement a novel socio-economic integration program, the ‘Diversity in Admissions’ pilot. Her study observed how school leadership – namely administrators and parents who lead the school’s committees, work to shape the pilot’s meanings and outcomes at the schools.
In her current work, Idit is looking at diversity admission programs at Israeli higher education institutions. Specifically, she studies the implications of the Israeli system’s focus on national and religious categories in admissions on who the institutions recruit and serve when they strive for greater educational equality. As part of her work, she is a member of the Ben Gurion chapter of “Israeli Hope”, a national effort for greater equality in academic and education, where she advises the university on how to shape admission questionnaires and criteria to include first generation college students who are currently not included in the university’s admissions efforts.
Idit’s work has been published in Sociology of Education and Travel Behavior and Society, and also in the New York City Blog Urban Matters.