Marshall Savidge Smith

Dean was a Senior Fellow of Education Policy. He was an advocate of educational equity for all students and an early leader in the standards-based reform movement. While first a Dean of the Stanford University School of Education from 1986 to 1993, Smith moved to the U.S. Department of Education where he was undersecretary of education (1993-2000) and then also acting deputy secretary of education (1996-2000). His scholarly work on standards helped define the Clinton administration's education agenda and, in Washington, he supervised the development of Clinton's Goals 2000: Educate America Act, Improving American Schools Act, and the School to Work Opportunities Act. Smith continued to focus on education reform as director of the education program for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, overseeing the development of OER (Open Education Resources) movement, supporting reforms in the California public schools, and working to improve the effectiveness of community colleges, especially in the area of students that need remedial courses. He returned to Washington to become the senior counselor to the Secretary and the director of international affairs at the education department (2009-2010). Prior to his time at Stanford, Smith was a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, a senior official in the education department in the Carter administration, and an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He was a member of the National Academy of Education, a former fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and was awarded the first Harvard Graduate School of Education medal for Lifetime Education Impact.