The Stanford University Graduate School of Education and the Departments of Sociology, Political Science, and Psychology offer an interdisciplinary training program for PhD students interested in education policy analysis. The Program is designed to provide doctoral students in social science disciplines (especially Sociology, Political Science, and Psychology, though it is open to students in other departments as well) and in the Graduate School of Education with advanced training in state-of-the-art quantitative methods of discipline-based education policy analysis. Education policy, for the purposes of this program, encompasses federal and state education policy and law and school district policies and practices pertaining to school leadership, human resources, curricula, and instructional practices, as well as the impact of other social policies and processes (e.g., immigration law and policy, child care policy) as they pertain specifically to educational processes and outcomes.
PhD students in the program will participate in an interdisciplinary core curriculum consisting of coursework in education policy, discipline-based theory, and applied quantitative research methods, including a 1-year course in methods of applied quantitative policy analysis, a course in measurement, several elective courses in statistics, a practicum in education research, and an ongoing interdisciplinary workshop in quantitative education policy analysis. Students will receive additional training through research apprenticeships with core faculty in the training program, a series of annual summer advanced training workshops and mini-conferences, and an ongoing education policy analysis speaker series.
The Training Program is co-directed by Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education and (by courtesy) Sociology and Michelle Reininger, Assistant Professor of Education (Research). Core faculty in the program include faculty from Education, the Hoover Institution, Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, and the Law School (list of core faculty is at the end of this document). The Program is funded by a five-year (2014-2019) grant with a two-year (2019-2021) no cost extension from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.