Patrick joined the faculty at Drew in 2005. He earned his Ph.D. in Government (and an M.Ed. in Education Policy) at the University of Virginia. Patrick did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University in 2003-2004 and was a visiting professor of government at Colby College in 2004-2005.

Prior to graduate school, Patrick worked for the Institute for Strategy Development, a political consulting firm in Washington, DC, and spent three years as a high school teacher in Maryland.

His work has been published in Journal of Policy History, Publius, The Public Interest, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, and in Educational Entrepreneurship and The Great Society and the High Tide of Liberalism. His book No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy, 1965-2005 was published by the University Press of Kansas in June 2006.