Heather J. Hough

heather_hough
Heather J. Hough
Senior Policy and Research Fellow,
Policy Analysis for California Education, Stanford University

Heather Hough is a senior policy and research fellow and the former executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). Her research and analytic approach explores how a wide range of data on student outcomes—including academic, health and well-being, and experiential—can inform our collective understanding of student success, teacher and system performance, and the efficacy of programs and policies. She is committed to strengthening the impact of research on local- and state-level policymaking and implementation, with a particular focus on policy coherence, system alignment, and continuous improvement. Hough has worked in a variety of capacities to support policy and practice in education, including as the founding director of the research partnership between PACE and the CORE Districts; as an improvement advisor at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; and as a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University, and the Center for Education Policy at SRI International. She has served on many statewide committees and work groups, and is currently a member of the advisory board for the Cradle-to-Career Data System. Hough received her BA in public policy and her PhD in education policy from Stanford University.

updated 2024

Publications by Heather J. Hough
School value-added models are increasingly used to measure schools’ contributions to student success. At the same time, policymakers and researchers agree that schools should support students’ social-emotional learning (SEL) as well as academic…
Evidence to Inform Policy
Governor Newsom’s first Budget Proposal increases funding for education in California. There are areas of substantive overlap in the Budget Proposal and research findings from the Getting Down to Facts II (GDTFII) research project, released in…
Views from the 2019 PACE/USC Rossier Poll
With a new Governor, State Superintendent, and Legislators in Sacramento and a diminished federal role in education, there is an opportunity for California’s leaders to take stock of recent educational reforms and make necessary improvements.…
Describing Chronically Absent Students, the Schools They Attend, and Implications for Accountability
Student absenteeism has recently entered the national spotlight with its emphasis in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and here in California with its inclusion in the School Dashboard. Yet many questions remain about who chronically absent…