Michael W. Kirst

Michael Kirst
Michael W. Kirst
Former President of the California Board of Education and Professor Emeritus of Education and Business Administration,
Stanford University

Michael W. Kirst is professor emeritus of education and business administration at Stanford University and a co-founder of PACE. He is a longtime education advisor to former California Governor Jerry Brown, who four times appointed Kirst president of state board. In this position, Kirst was instrumental in reshaping education policy and finance in California, overseeing the new academic standards and assessments in math and English language arts, the new science standards, and the Local Control Funding Formula. Before joining the Stanford University faculty, Kirst held several positions with the federal government. He has written or edited more than a dozen books, including Political Dynamics of American Education, and, with Andrea Venezia, From High School to College. Kirst received his PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

updated 2013

Contributing topics
Access, quality & alignment in early childhood education
College access & postsecondary success
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
PACE/USC Rossier Voter Poll
Policy Research Panels
Commentary by Michael W. Kirst
: California’s Dashboard Data Will Guide Improvement
: Michael Kirst on New Federal and State Policies
Michael W. Kirst in the Media
: Public School Choice Exists in California, but Few Districts Offer It
: California Spends More on Schools With the Neediest Kids. Here’s How It’s Succeeded, and Failed.
: Inside California’s Education System: A Conversation with PACE Cofounder Dr. Michael W. Kirst
: A Refresher Guide to the California School Dashboard
: California’s Achievement Gap Defies Extra Billions in School Spending
Publications by Michael W. Kirst
Lessons From the New Science Curriculum of the 1950s and 1960s
Lessons From the New Science Curriculum of the 1950s and 1960s
The development of the "new science curriculum" began in 1956 with a grant from the newly formed National Science Foundation (NSF) to Jerold Zacharias at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zacharias was asked to write a "real science"…
A Changing Context Means School Board Reform
A Changing Context Means School Board Reform
One major problem plagues all attempts to understand and prescribe policy for school boards: there are too many school boards (about 15,000) and too many board mem­bers (some 97,000) to be able to gener­alize about the behavior of all boards.…
General Summary for Minority Oversample: With Multiple Punch Questions
General Summary for Minority Oversample
(With Multiple Punch Questions)
General Summary #2660 – California/Minor – 9/93
Strengths and Weaknesses of American Education
Strengths and Weaknesses of American Education
The public education sys­tem in the U.S. has served this nation well. Today and in the future, it must meet un­precedented challenges. How­ever, arguments about whether the per­formance of our students has declined over time miss the point. The 1990…