Director
Mike Smith is one of the nation’s most respected education policymakers. His career includes significant contributions to academia, policymaking, educational research and evaluation, and has authored and made contributions to seminal reports and studies on education. Smith’s areas of expertise include standards and assessments, educational research and evaluation, use of technology in education, and early childhood education. Dr. Smith is currently an education consultant, after having served as key advisor at the U.S. Department of Education during three administrations.
Prior to serving President Barak Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Smith was both acting deputy secretary and under secretary under Secretary Richard Riley during the Clinton Administration. He was chief of staff to the first secretary of education, Shirley Hufstedler, and also served as the assistant commissioner for policy studies in the Office of Education, in the former Department of Health, Education in the Carter Administration. Before that, Smith helped lead the National Institute of Education’s work in education research and development. While in federal government, Smith oversaw the development and passage of several major education laws.
Just before his most recent stint in Washington, Smith was program director for education at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif. Outside of government; he was at different times an associate professor at Harvard, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University, and dean of Stanford’s school of education. A member of the National Academy of Education and former chairman of the board of the American Institutes of Research and throughout his career, Smith authored publications on numerous topics, including school effectiveness and standards-based reform. He has lent his expertise to many commission, foundations and boards, including the National Research Council, and has been a consultant to many government agencies, foundations, and nonprofit organizations, such as the Education Testing Service, and to foreign governments. Marshall earned a B.A. at Harvard College and both a master’s and a doctoral degree in Measurement and Statistics from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
