PRESIDEN T’S COL U M N by John Hennessy
What It Will Take
to Improve K- 12 Schools
Education reform is a Stanford priority, and a national imperative.
Many of you have heard me speak about the role of the university in helping the United States remain economically competitive. One of the most critical ways we can make an impact is in
assuring an educated workforce for our future, and we can do that
in part through our work to improve the educational outcomes in
our nation’s K- 12 schools.
If every student had a highly e;ective teacher for even three
years in a row, we could nearly eliminate the achievement gap
between student groups. Over the past several
years, the K- 12 Initiative at Stanford has
been dedicated to offering a comprehensive, transformative and multidisciplinary
approach to educational improvement.
The initiative has led to the creation of
two new multidisciplinary centers—
the Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching (CSET)
—that are providing innovative research and tools for educators and
decision makers.
We know that great teachers are
the cornerstones of improving student
performance, but we know less about
how to prepare teachers for the modern classroom. Since 2009, CSET has
worked with more than 1,200 teachers and school leaders to determine
what attributes make a great teacher and
create professional development courses
to help improve teacher quality. Recently,
a set of districts and universities around the
country has begun using CSET’s innovative
online professional courses to help prepare
more e;ective teachers.
Reform in K- 12 education has been based
too infrequently on measurements of student outcome. A key shortcoming has been
the lack of data and sophisticated analysis to
tell us what reforms are most needed and cost-e;ective. CEPA is helping decision makers at all
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We know that great teachers are
the cornerstones of improving student
performance, but we know less about
how to prepare teachers for the mod-
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levels analyze and interpret large volumes of data, translating evidence into improvement by working directly with state and federal
policy makers. Participating in the program are seven large school
districts across the country serving nearly 2 million students, in cities including New York, Miami, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Denver,
San Francisco and Oakland.
Both centers are committed to addressing issues related to
leadership capacity to sustain e;ective change. The integrated,
long-term partnerships they maintain with school leadership development teams allow innovation to take hold and to be sustained
for maximum impact on student achievement. These two centers
join a variety of e;orts across the University—from the Hoover
Institution’s Koret Task Force on K- 12 Education to the Stanford
College Prep program o;ered to East Palo Alto students through
the Haas Center to Stanford’s Summer Program for Teachers—in
contributing to solutions to this critical national problem.
We have also made an important leadership appointment in
our School of Education, where Claude Steele returned this fall to
serve as dean. Dean Steele is not only recognized as a leader within higher education, having most recently served as provost at
Columbia University, he is a social scientist dedicated to improving the quality of our schools and the educational outcomes of our
students. His work examining the underachievement of minority
students has been used extensively by educators to understand
group di;erences in school and test performance, and has led to a
variety of interventions in educational settings that improve
these performances. He understands intimately the challenges
facing our schools and is passionate about making a di;erence.
To further the conversation about the university role in K- 12
schools, our 2011 Roundtable event held in collaboration with Stanford Reunion Homecoming focused on solutions to the di;culties
that plague public education. We invited PBS host Charlie Rose and
a distinguished panel including Claude Steele, Newark Mayor Cory
Booker, ’91, MA ’92, and Netflix founder Reed Hastings, MS ’88,
Gr. ’98, to campus to discuss with all of you how innovators and
innovations can help us change the status quo.
Working simultaneously with teachers, policy makers and
leaders, Stanford University is applying its research expertise to
develop the models necessary to drive education reform and, ultimately, improve the achievement levels of our nation’s students.
I am very proud of this work and I hope you will be, too. ■
GLENN MATSUMURA
