Martin West

Martin West
Martin West
Professor of Education,
Harvard University

Martin West is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and editor-in-chief of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research on education policy. He is also deputy director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and a member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. West studies the politics of K-12 education in the United States and how education policies affect student learning and social-emotional development. He previously worked as senior advisor to the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; taught at Brown University; and was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution. West received his Ph.D. in government and social policy from Harvard.

Contributing topics
Access, quality & alignment in early childhood education
Continuous school improvement & support
Education finance
Educational governance & policy
Educator workforce & effectiveness
Supporting students’ social-emotional, mental & physical health
Understanding, measuring & improving student outcomes
Contributing initiatives
CORE-PACE Research Partnership
COVID-19 Recovery
Getting Down to Facts II
LCFF Research Collaborative
Martin West in the Media
: How Schools Can Help Children Recover from COVID Closures
: Elevating Student Voice in Education
: California’s CORE districts joined forces to bolster social-emotional developme…
: These California districts joined forces to bolster social-emotional developmen…
: California research project timed to elevate education in fall elections, infor…
Publications by Martin West
Brief
What Do Changes in Social-Emotional Learning Tell Us About Changes in Academic and Behavioral Outcomes?
Prior work has shown that levels of self-reported student social-emotional learning (SEL) predict student achievement levels—as well as student achievement gains—but little has been done to understand if within-student changes in student reports of…
GDTFII Brief Charter
Charter Schools in California
When California became the second state to authorize charter schools in 1992, the state’s system for authorization, oversight, and renewal of charter schools was in many ways a bold experiment. The concept was new, and the impacts on both student…
Trends in Student Social-Emotional Learning
Evidence from the CORE Districts
Mounting evidence demonstrates that social-emotional skills are important for students’ academic and life success, yet we have limited evidence on how these skills develop over time and how this development varies across student subgroups. In this…
SEL School Effects May 2018
School Effects on Social-Emotional Learning
Findings from the First Large-Scale Panel Survey of Students
Measures of school-level growth in student outcomes are common tools used to assess the impacts of schools. The vast majority of these measures are based on standardized tests, even though emerging evidence demonstrates the importance of social-…