ZeChocMoose

If I was you - I would probably apply to a mix of master's and PhD programs and see where the chips fall.  My guess is for the super competitive programs like Harvard, Stanford, etc. where there is only 10% acceptance rate (or lower), it is going to be difficult because you'll be competing in a very strong application pool for a limited amount of spots with the majority of stronger candidates having master's degrees + several years of experience beyond the master's.  
You'll really need to stand out somehow which is hard to do. The main stumbling block I see is convincing the committee that you are committed to scholarship in international education especially if you have no research in the area and your professional experience in the area is limited (3 years or less). (From your description, are you on the first year of teaching English in Japan?) 
You'll need to write a very convincing SOP about your research interests and how they align with several of the faculty - and to be honest that might not be enough. Programs at the doctoral level tend to be risk adverse and don't take as many chances on people in other levels (undergrad, master's) especially if they are unsure you will succeed in the program. Therefore, I also would apply to some less competitive doctoral programs where you can still research your topic areas in international education.

I agree with so_it_goes and nashville0808.  You'll need several courses in statistics and research design to be competitive for education research/policy jobs directly after your master's.  They are right that generally a 1-year program is not going to be particularly helpful because it doesn't give you enough time to take the courses that you'll need.  Ideally, you'll also want to have an internship/assistantship in a research/policy centered position because the datasets that you use in class are not the ones that you'll encounter on the job and you'll want to learn good data cleaning, coding, and management skills with raw data.
 
I don't think you necessarily need a higher ed master's, though, to do education research or policy.  I have seen people get these jobs with just solid methods backgrounds (economics, political science, psychology, statistics, or public policy) and work experience in either education or higher education.  If you do go the higher ed master's route, I would do a two year program that requires you to take at least two courses in statistics and one course in research design.  There are not a lot of programs like that - most of them focus on student affairs - but so_it_goes mentions a couple.  I would also look at Vanderbilt, Penn State, and Maryland.    
 
I went into institutional research directly after my higher ed master's, but I took 3 courses in statistics, one in research design, and one in qualitative research methods.  I felt that my methods training made me sufficiently prepared for my job interviews and working on the job doing analyses.

Since you are changing topics, this makes it fairly easy/justifiable/understandable to explain the change in committee members and let the 19th century person go.  Don't keep a toxic person on your committee.  Just don't.  There is no benefit to doing this especially given the behavior of this person to you in the past. You'll feel a lot better once you make the clean break and you can move forward with a group of people who at the least are neutral towards you and at the best will be supportive.
I would also be concerned that the DGS is not going to be that supportive/helpful if you have problems with the 19th century person in the future given that hu is married to this person. That seems like a fairly large conflict of interest that most people will find it difficult to navigate even if they try to not let that affect their judgement of the situation. I also have watched readers on people's comprehensive exams try to actively fail the person so the potential for horrible outcomes seems too high IMO to keep this person on your committee. 

I personally would think that working with people who make you feel good about yourself should be your top priority, even if it means changing advisors and/or topics. You can't do good work if you're constantly anxious, and frankly the PhD is not worth ruining your mental health. Especially since you seem to have others' agreement, I would try to find a way to diplomatically insist on getting this person off your committee who is causing you so much stress; I can't tell if the DGS is trying to help by trying to allow you to keep your topic or if they have some additional motive, but it's not clear what good can come out of keeping someone on your committee who's already expressed displeasure with your work. So yes, I would switch.

@wlsWKglaemfek I have so many things I want to tell you but let me start by quickly saying this, just on the practical side of things (and please don't take this to mean that I in any way underestimate all the other implications of this terrible thing that has happened to you): I think you may run into trouble if you only submit two letters. At least in some cases, it may automatically disqualify your application because it is an official requirement that you've not met. So asking to only submit two letters would be difficult. If at all possible, I would suggest trying to replace the offender with another letter, even if it's short or not as strong. This may require telling some white lie to some secretary about this person encountering a problem getting letters done in time and asking that they be replaced in the application system, in cases where you may not be able to do this alone (some systems won't let you change LOR info once you've entered it). And I'd say ask someone, anyone, else for a LOR, and do it as soon as you can. It's very often the case that LOR writers get extra time to submit their letters beyond the official deadline given to applicants. So it's worth a try, and they may still have 2+ weeks. If your other two letters are strong, a just so-so third letter shouldn't be a big problem. It's quite often the case that students don't have that many strong personal relationships with professors at the undergrad stage and end up with one letter that's weaker than the others.

It really, really depends on the department.
In my current department, you might be lucky and get 1-3 classes to "transfer," but you need to have taken the course within 5 years and then you have to submit a packet of materials that includes the syllabus, an official transcript, and the final assignment for the course.  Usually, a paper - but sometimes an exam.  Then you need to get the professor that teaches the equivalent course to read and review the materials and sign the form that says that the course that you took elsewhere is "equivalent."  (The professor might request additional information to make an assessment - i.e. powerpoint slides, other assignments, etc.)  Then the department chair needs to review everything and sign - then it goes to the dean to review the materials and sign.  So it is a lot of work and this is only for one course!  Anywhere in this chain - you might get told no.  
I got two courses to transfer this way and my master's was in the same discipline.  I could not get the third class to transfer because the professor who teaches the "equivalent" course said no.  The max I heard someone got was four courses to transfer from their master's, but it seemed really difficult because the school considers 4 to be a lot and I haven't heard anyone else achieve this feat.

I agree with you. I think it's one of those it sorta depends what you end up doing in the field of education because education is not just solely about K-12 students or their schools. There are some subfields that it's more important to have leadership/administrative experience or to understand the nitty gritty of how education policies are made or to be able to apply research methods to evaluate education programs.  I would advocate more for having some background in your education subfield before you go back to school - that could be teaching, but it doesn't have to be. 
I don't think it's fair or realistic to assume that policymakers are going to have teaching - or really any education employment experience.  There are a lot of type of policies that they need to deal with and they are not going to have background knowledge on the majority of them.  I think it's way more important that they reach out and listen to educators than for them to personally have the experience.
K-12 education has serious problems not because people don't have teaching experience - it's because there is widespread inequality in our society and we see that play out in the quality of schools that are available to students.  Students who are poor and students of color often attend schools in low quality schools year after year that have compounding effects on the quality of education that they receive and how they feel about education.   
To be fair a lot of people don't understand this - policymakers, the public, some teachers, some academics, etc.  State assessment tests are easy data to collect from all public school students so it tends to get used a lot in all sorts of ways - some legitimate and some not.

I agree and I also think it needs to come full circle.  Once researchers know what is the effective component or at least strongly suspect it's x, y, and z in this particular school or schools  - they need to try to replicate it in other classrooms and schools.  The field is starting to do more of this which I find promising - but a lot people tend to want to stop once they find something that worked in one school and label it "best practices" which is so unfortunate because some of these practices don't translate well to other places or other educational contexts -or- school doesn't have adequate resources to successfully implement the practice.
Having worked with a lot of economists, I do think they don't get or maybe believe that education context matters.  I am not sure if it about insufficient background in education or the models that they tend to estimate just ignores this - but yea some of the assumptions that they make in their models are a bit puzzling.
To me, this comes back to how educators are trained not whether they have a background in teaching.  Schools of education don't do a particular great job in making sure students in all education programs understand research, assessment, and evaluation.  They tend to make sure only students who are already interested in these topics learn about these issues.  Unfortunately, in some schools of education, they don't have adequate faculty to teach these topics either.  I know in higher ed programs there are only a handful of schools that even offer classes on these topics.

1) It's because work experience is super important to doing public policy well. This field is all about analyzing other fields, like healthcare, education, international development, military affairs, etc, that someone without any experience in those fields is going to be a lot less effective and insightful. Bottom line: if your job is helping to set the rules by which someone else does their job, then you should know how they do their job.
2) It's because MPA/MPP programs don't teach you about what public policy is. They teach you HOW to do it, not WHAT it is. Methods and skills classes take up the bulk of what those programs offer, and especially the core curriculum. Subject matter classes are for later on, and even then, some friends believed that you should never take a graduate class on something if you can read a book about it instead. 
3) It's because work experience makes you a better student in grad school. I saw people who had more work experience were bringing more to class discussions and getting more out of our education. I really enjoyed learning directly from friends and colleagues who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan, who had taught deaf children in Kenya, who worked with coffee farmers in Guatemala. Of course, people who came straight from undergraduate were still excellent because they have to be - there's a higher bar set for them by admissions, but why handicap yourself if you don't have to?
Go get a few years of work experience: go work in a hospital or get deployed or work on a campaign or join a union or be a journalist or teach maternal health in another country. Then, if you still want an MPA/MPP, come back and contribute your ideas for doing it better. 

If you want to teach K-12 - usually the advice is to attend a well respected nearby public university because it is cheaper and they have ties to local schools that you want to work in post graduation.

The general advice is yes, the more competitive education PhD programs expect to see a master's degree and several years of experience to be competitive.  Of course, there are always exceptions and people can get in without master's degrees (unless it's an admission requirement which it is for some programs). For a reference point, my top 10 program has 3 PhD students out of about 60 that only have bachelor's degrees.  They all had several years of higher education research experience during undergrad though so that put them on a level playing field with others.
If you're not competitive for the PhD program, departments tend to refer you to the master's admission pool and might accept you into the master's program instead.  I know this happens a lot in my program. 

If you want to teach K-12 - usually the advice is to attend a well respected nearby public university because it is cheaper and they have ties to local schools that you want to work in post graduation.

No one that I knew who left thought they wouldn't finish - it just happens sometimes because priorities change and finishing doesn't seem as important anymore.  It is far better to accept that as a possibility and work to make sure that doesn't happen than to think that won't happen to you because you are more "focused and responsible." I also don't think that people who don't finish are flaky or irresponsible - but that is a whole other discussion...
My suggestions would be while you are still on campus is to meet with all your committee members about your proposed schedule to finish and ask them how frequently they will be willing to read drafts.  I would ask to set up semi-regular meetings at least with your advisor in the upcoming year to check in and discuss your work.  You also really want to think about concrete benchmarks you want to achieve each month (or week) to make sure you are making progress.  If you can find a writing group to attend that might be helpful and an extra support.  
Lastly, to be kind to yourself.  Learning a new job can be kinda exhausting in the first couple months especially if you have never held a full-time job before.  You might want to go light in months 1 & 2 and then start adding in more time to work on the dissertation as you become more comfortable with your job.  Good luck! 

It is fairly common for people in my field to do this (i.e. finish their dissertation from afar while working in the field full-time) after they have reached candidacy (i.e. completed all coursework and passed the comprehensive exam) because they can secure high paying jobs w/o having completed the PhD.  The people that I have seen to be more successful are the ones that secured their dissertation committee and defended their proposal before they left.  They also have partners who are willing to handle all the domestic things (i.e. cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc) while you are focusing on just working and dissertating.  The people that tend to struggle are the ones who leave without having defended their proposal and only a vague idea of their dissertation.  That being said - it typically takes them another 2-4 years to finish part-time with 2 years for the people with defended proposals and 4 years for the people w/o defended proposals.  Some of this is because they end up taking jobs where they have a lot of responsibility and are working 60+ hours a week which makes it difficult to find the time to do the dissertation and the energy especially if you are in charge of all the domestic stuff.  Do you know how many hours typically people work in your position?  
How supportive is your advisor about finishing from afar?  The other difficultly I have seen is people who try to finish from afar and they cannot get the necessary support from their advisor because either their advisor doesn't want their students to do this and/or their advisor is not responsive/difficult to get a hold of which makes it impossible to progress.  
And of course some people just don't finish (I would say about a 1/3) because the job and/or life just gets in the way and the motivation to finish decreases the longer you are away from the program and they have a job that they are comfortable in.  These people end up timing out of the program as we only have 5 years to finish our dissertations after we reached candidacy.  How long do you have according to your school policies?
 

I think there is a time to "follow your dreams" and there is a time to get realistic.  I am not sure how old you are currently - but you might be phasing into the time to get realistic part of your life especially given that your employment is not too stable at the moment and I assuming that you don't have a spouse/significant other/family member that is going to financially support you for the rest of your life.  
Since there are a lot of jobs that you find interesting from your original post - "philosophy, teaching/education, counseling, social work, or educational counseling" -- I would start exploring the ones where there are more jobs available and are going to give you a high enough salary to meet your standard of living (whatever that is). Based on that, I would rule out philosophy professor given that the market is terrible and a philosophy PhD is long - 5+ years.  Also philosophy professors don't just teach - they primarily do research, sit on committees, mentor students, etc.  Instead, I would look into K-12 teaching or school counseling - both are jobs that you can do with a master's and are much more plentiful than trying to secure a philosophy professorship.  Perhaps see if you can get a non-teaching job in a K-12 school to see if you like the environment and talk to teachers to see how they feel about their jobs.

No one that I knew who left thought they wouldn't finish - it just happens sometimes because priorities change and finishing doesn't seem as important anymore.  It is far better to accept that as a possibility and work to make sure that doesn't happen than to think that won't happen to you because you are more "focused and responsible." I also don't think that people who don't finish are flaky or irresponsible - but that is a whole other discussion...
My suggestions would be while you are still on campus is to meet with all your committee members about your proposed schedule to finish and ask them how frequently they will be willing to read drafts.  I would ask to set up semi-regular meetings at least with your advisor in the upcoming year to check in and discuss your work.  You also really want to think about concrete benchmarks you want to achieve each month (or week) to make sure you are making progress.  If you can find a writing group to attend that might be helpful and an extra support.  
Lastly, to be kind to yourself.  Learning a new job can be kinda exhausting in the first couple months especially if you have never held a full-time job before.  You might want to go light in months 1 & 2 and then start adding in more time to work on the dissertation as you become more comfortable with your job.  Good luck! 

I can see myself doing 1 of 2 options depending how risk adverse I felt:
(1). (Most risky) I would hold out for Lab 4 and then if the professor didn't get funding - do some new lab rotations in the fall.  My only concern with this is what happens with your funding for your second year if you haven't joined a lab yet?
(2) (Least risky).  Join Lab 2 - that seems like the least worse lab for you.  I know you said you felt like you were in prison (really - not good!) - but is it possible that the PI is just like that with new people to the lab and would back off to about a 5 on the independence scale?  Could you ask advance students in the lab?  If that is not the case - could you try to reset your perspective about this so while you have a more hands on PI that is not your preference, perhaps there are benefits to that that you don't see quite yet - i.e. less floundering/going down rabbit holes? 
 

I also disagree a bit with what nashville0808 has written.  I sat on the admissions committee for one cycle each at my master's school and my current PhD school both in higher education.  While each admission committee did the process slightly differently, it was clear to me how much faculty contact mattered.  So yes, I would reach out to faculty and/or the department chair to ask how to improve your application especially given that you were interviewed at one school.  That means that you were really close and it would be helpful to have those insights whether that be they didn't see you as a good fit or if you need to improve x, y, z in your application to make you more competitive compared to the other people in the pool.
Publications.  This is tricky.  It is not really the case any more that no PhD applicants would have them or they would be rare.  I sat on the committee 2 years ago and the more competitive applicants would have them or at the very least would be presenting at education conferences.  Although the type of publications that would usually have is a chapter in an edited book or a lower level education journal.  No one really expects that you would have a publication in one of the top education journals.  Also, one year is a tight time frame to start writing an article from scratch and expect that it would accepted in time to be in on your C.V. next year.
I do agree with nashville0808 that experience is critical.  Everyone in my PhD program had either worked in education or an education adjacent field for at least three years -- usually a lot more with progressing levels of responsibility. Personally, I had 4 years of full-time experience in higher ed and 2 years of part-time experience in higher ed (when I was a GA as a master's student) before I applied.  I ended up being on the younger side of my cohort too!  
Since you only have one year of experience (I think?) -- you might want to hold off for a couple cycles and then apply.  You'll be much more competitive and you'll have better postgraduate outcomes too given how the field values experience so much.

I think there is a time to "follow your dreams" and there is a time to get realistic.  I am not sure how old you are currently - but you might be phasing into the time to get realistic part of your life especially given that your employment is not too stable at the moment and I assuming that you don't have a spouse/significant other/family member that is going to financially support you for the rest of your life.  
Since there are a lot of jobs that you find interesting from your original post - "philosophy, teaching/education, counseling, social work, or educational counseling" -- I would start exploring the ones where there are more jobs available and are going to give you a high enough salary to meet your standard of living (whatever that is). Based on that, I would rule out philosophy professor given that the market is terrible and a philosophy PhD is long - 5+ years.  Also philosophy professors don't just teach - they primarily do research, sit on committees, mentor students, etc.  Instead, I would look into K-12 teaching or school counseling - both are jobs that you can do with a master's and are much more plentiful than trying to secure a philosophy professorship.  Perhaps see if you can get a non-teaching job in a K-12 school to see if you like the environment and talk to teachers to see how they feel about their jobs.

I just saw an announcement for an international summer school on higher education research in St. Petersburg, Russia, one on cluster-randomized trials for education research in Evanston, Illinois, and a data institute to learn more about U.S. federal education data in Washington, DC.  I don't know much about them though or anyone who has done it - but perhaps you would be interested in them.  I don't think any of them are funded though.
I agree with others that 1.5 months is not really long enough to offer your services for research especially if you are "cold calling" faculty members.
Here is first blurb:
The Institute of Education at National Research University – Higher School of Economics (Moscow), China Institute for Educational Finance Research and Graduate School of Education at Peking University invite earlier career researchers, institutional researchers, and doctoral students, to apply to the upcoming IV INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH. The theme of the Summer School 2016 is “HIGHER EDUCATION, SOCIETY AND STATE, and it will be held from June 4-10, 2016,  in St. Petersburg Russia.  The format of the Summer School includes seminars, discussions of participants’ research projects, master-classes on research methodology and writing articles for academic journals. The working language of the summer school is English. Participants must have a strong command of spoken and written English. Further information about the International Summer School on higher education research can be found here: http://ioe.hse.ru/en/announcements/172571273.html
Here is the second blurb:
The National Center for Education Research (NCER) is accepting applications for its tenth Summer Research Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials (CRT). NCER, a part of the Institute of Education Sciences, hosts this Training Institute to increase the capacity of researchers to develop and conduct rigorous evaluations of the impacts that education interventions have on student outcomes.  The institute will be held from July 18-28th, 2016 at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois.  For information is here: http://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/workshops/annual-summer-workshops/cluster-randomized-trials/
Here is the third blurb:
With support from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) operates the NCES Data Institute: Using IPEDS, Sample Surveys, and Federal Datasets to Support Research on Postsecondary Education. The Institute is an intensive introduction to NCES datasets and research methodologies using large-scale national data sources.
The NCES Data Institute (NDI) aims to achieve four major objectives: (1) Stimulate interest in using IPEDS, Sample Surveys, and other federal data to address current and future research questions in institutional research, the social sciences, and education; (2) Instruct participants in the methods of using IPEDS, Sample Surveys, and other federal data to conduct analyses; (3) Enhance understanding about methodological and technological issues relevant to IPEDS and national sample survey data collections, and (4) Encourage collaborative research studies between participants and agency staff to improve future IPEDS data collection and analysis.
The online application process closes March 31, 2016. For additional information and to apply, please visit http://bit.ly/1oKVt5F
 
 

Given your situation, I would first put all my effort into bettering my employment situation. Once that is stable and you're not working 7 days a week, then you can spend time trying to figure out what you want to do for a career. Right now, there are way too many options for anyone to really be able to help you pick a career. One thing that could help is doing informational interviews with people in those careers to find out what a day in their life looks like and what steps they would recommend you take to pursue a career in that area.

I also in the higher ed policy subfield and you definitely want a PhD and not an EdD.  The policy subfield of higher ed is super focused on statistics, data, and research.  The way that most EdDs are set up, you won't get enough research training to be competitive for jobs when you graduate assuming that you are going to try to get a policy research position.
This is super broad and to be honest, I am not exactly sure what you want to study.  Are you concerned about their lack of college knowledge?  financial barriers?  academic preparation?  Lack of institutional support when they come to campus?  Cultural transitions especially in the case for some international students?   I suggest for you to narrow your research interests down and actively target faculty that you want to work with at schools that you want to attend.  It is not clear to me how you targeted the schools that you listed in your post.

I wouldn't drop it because I imagine this is going to come up again and again given that your advisor seems unresponsive to emails and doesn't come to the lab frequently. I like knp's script on how to proceed about asking her which method she prefers you to send those reminders.
Another way I try to curtail this is the language I use in my follow up reminders. What do you say in your reminders?  Usually what I do if my advisor hasn't answered my email after a week and she hasn't been in the office due to travel - I send a follow up email saying something to the effect that I sent her an email last week and I haven't heard back so I am just checking in to see if she can [state what you need your advisor to do.] This part is essential because it reminds your advisor, hey MonstersUTerp has tried to reach me already and I haven't responded - maybe I should do something about that.  If the deadline is super pressing - I would call my advisor if she was not responding to my emails, hasn't been in the office, and I wasn't sure if she had even received my multiple email requests.
As a grad student you need to learn how to professionally advocate for yourself and this seems like a good time as any to do it.  You don't want this occur in the future especially for a high stakes opportunity such as her dropping the ball and forgetting to submit a recommendation for jobs or funding.
 

While you're at it, also ask "What medium would you prefer me to use for these reminders?" If she says email, well, that's a problem. But if she says she likes to hear by phone and gives you her phone number, or that she prefers you mention it when she's in her office in the morning...then you've solved it for next time!

I also disagree a bit with what nashville0808 has written.  I sat on the admissions committee for one cycle each at my master's school and my current PhD school both in higher education.  While each admission committee did the process slightly differently, it was clear to me how much faculty contact mattered.  So yes, I would reach out to faculty and/or the department chair to ask how to improve your application especially given that you were interviewed at one school.  That means that you were really close and it would be helpful to have those insights whether that be they didn't see you as a good fit or if you need to improve x, y, z in your application to make you more competitive compared to the other people in the pool.
Publications.  This is tricky.  It is not really the case any more that no PhD applicants would have them or they would be rare.  I sat on the committee 2 years ago and the more competitive applicants would have them or at the very least would be presenting at education conferences.  Although the type of publications that would usually have is a chapter in an edited book or a lower level education journal.  No one really expects that you would have a publication in one of the top education journals.  Also, one year is a tight time frame to start writing an article from scratch and expect that it would accepted in time to be in on your C.V. next year.
I do agree with nashville0808 that experience is critical.  Everyone in my PhD program had either worked in education or an education adjacent field for at least three years -- usually a lot more with progressing levels of responsibility. Personally, I had 4 years of full-time experience in higher ed and 2 years of part-time experience in higher ed (when I was a GA as a master's student) before I applied.  I ended up being on the younger side of my cohort too!  
Since you only have one year of experience (I think?) -- you might want to hold off for a couple cycles and then apply.  You'll be much more competitive and you'll have better postgraduate outcomes too given how the field values experience so much.