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
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Improving the Transition from High School to Postsecondary Education
PACE presents three working papers on the inadequacies and difficulties of successful transition from high school to college. These papers are derived from The Bridge Project, a six-state study of K–16 issues. These three papers do not attempt to…
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Assessing California’s Accountability System
Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Improvement
Accountability for student performance is on the minds of everyone in U.S. education—from policymakers to district administrators to principals. While the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has claimed center stage in the national…
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What Have We Learned About Class Size Reduction in California?
The mid-1990s found California worried about the education its students were receiving. Standardized tests provided evidence that the state’s students were losing ground compared to their counterparts across the country. The results of the 1994…
Class Size Reduction in California: Findings from 1999–00 and 2000–01
Class Size Reduction in California
Findings from 1999–2000 and 2000–01
This third report on our ongoing evaluation of California’s Class Size Reduction (CSR) program brings us up through the 2000–01 school year. We update our previous findings on the implementation of the CSR program in Grades K–3 and on how the…