David Lapp
Senior Fellow, Policy Research
Pronouns: He/Him
Degrees
- J.D. from Beasley School of Law: Temple University
- B.A. in History & Secondary Education: Goshen College
About David Lapp
David Lapp serves as RFA’s Director of Policy Research where he oversees a range of projects at the nexus of education research and policy. He leads RFA’s Pennsylvania Clearinghouse for Education Research (PACER) project to inform state education policy discussions through objective research and analysis. He also provides oversight direction to RFA’s ACER project (Allegheny County Education Research), a local education policy research project. Lapp recently oversaw creation of RFA’s Educational Opportunity Dashboard, a tool to examine disparities in access to 14 indicators by race and income from the Civil Rights Data Collection.
Before joining RFA in 2016, Lapp was a staff attorney at the Education Law Center – PA, where he litigated cases and conducted policy research on a wide variety of legal issues related to public education, including school funding, student discipline, race and disability discrimination, student enrollment, and charter school law. At ELC, David also helped districts and charter schools revise their Student Codes of Conduct to minimize reliance on exclusionary discipline. He also helped create, train, and advise the Student Discipline Advocacy Service, a law student collaborative that provides assistance to students facing expulsion and disciplinary transfers in Philadelphia public schools. Lapp recently taught education law at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. He received his JD from Temple Law School, which awarded him the post-graduate Conwell Community Corps Fellowship. Prior to practicing law, Lapp taught high school social studies for nine years in two Philadelphia charter schools.
