Timeline

2005

Elementary STEP

The Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP), hitherto focused on secondary education, adds a master’s program in elementary-school training.

2005

Ten Lessons the Arts Teach

Prof. Elliott Eisner wins the Grawemeyer Prize for his 2002 book The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Its thesis: Art is not merely an enrichment for academic programs, but a key way that students learn how to learn.

2005

Barnum Center opens

Barnum Family Center for School and Community Partnerships opens.

2006

A lift for future teachers

Judy Avery, ’59, helps lift bars to a Stanford teaching degree with her $10 million gift, matched by the university, toward student-loan forgiveness for STEP graduates who teach in public or under-resourced private schools.

2006

Shulman honored

Lee Shulman, education professor emeritus and director of the Carnegie Institute of Education housed at Stanford, wins the Grawemeyer Prize for his 2004 book The Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning and Learning to Teach.


Hear Shulman's oral history, conducted by Michael Kirst for the Stanford Historical Society. 

2006

IREPP opens

The Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice (IREPP) is established. Its rigorous and systematic research and analysis is informed by the realities of educational settings.

2007

Assessment hailed

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing unanimously approves the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), a Stanford-led, innovative model that evaluates teacher classroom performance.

2008

Open-source research

Faculty members unanimously decide to make their scholarly articles available online for free to the public, becoming the first education school in the nation to do so.

2008

Building great principals

The Stanford Principal Fellows Program opens to challenge and strengthen exceptional, early-career principals. During a year of intensive retreats and monthly working seminars, participants build leadership skills and the capacity to create transformative environments. 

2009

Partnering with San Francisco schools

Stanford formalizes a research-practice partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District. 

The large urban district acquires, interprets, and uses Stanford research, while Stanford students and scholars learn from real-world practices with the goal of advancing student achievement in San Francisco and beyond. 

2009

Undergraduate minor

Responding to student interest, the School of Education forms an undergraduate minor to prepare students for careers in teaching, crafting policy and managing schools.

2009

Focus on policy

The Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) is created as part of the Stanford Challenge, a multidisciplinary initiative aimed at bringing together scholars from across the university to tackle some of the world’s most enduring and pressing issues.

2010

Jewish studies

The Jim Joseph Foundation gives $12 million to create a doctoral and research concentration in education and Jewish studies. It is the largest gift in the School of Education’s history.

2011

Forging a digital future

Social psychologist Prof. Claude Steele, a member of the Stanford faculty from 1991 to 2009, becomes dean. He creates faculty positions to enhance education for underserved children and advance the use and development of new technologies. 

Steele launches the initiatives Education’s Digital Future and the Workshop on Poverty, Inequality and Education, and he paves the way for education faculty and students to pursue leadership and research in online learning.

2012

Innovating for Brazil

The school and the Lemann Foundation open the Lemann Center for Educational Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazil, a 10-year venture headquartered at CERAS that develops new approaches to learning, especially among low-income students, both in and out of the Brazilian school system.

2012

The MOOC era

Prof. Daniel McFarland puts his Organizational Analysis class on the web as a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and draws 44,501 participants from 70 countries. 

“I gained a lot of respect for TV actors,” McFarland notes. “Every minute they watched, I wanted to give them something meaningful and succinct.”

2013

A new name: The GSE

The school is renamed the Stanford Graduate School of Education, reflecting its mission of advanced training in research, policy and leadership. 

2013

Lens on race, inequality and language

The doctoral program in Race, Inequality and Language in Education (RILE) enrolls its first cohort. 

In RILE, now headed by Prof. Arnetha Ball, students and scholars explore phenomena of race, language and inequality and apply their theoretical knowledge to educational practice in increasingly complex and diverse societies. In 2017, faculty vote to formalize RILE as a cross-disciplinary doctorate program. 

2013

A Nobel professor

Physics laureate Prof. Carl Wieman joins the education school faculty as a leading voice in improving science teaching.

2013

Helping teachers to bloom where they're needed most

The Hollyhock Fellowship program brings talented early-career teachers to campus for skill-building, support and enrichment to help teachers persist and thrive in the classroom.

It joins such professional-development activities from the GSE's Center to Support Excellence in Teaching as courses at school sites and the summer Stanford Teaching Festival on campus. 

2014

Funding future teachers

STEP announces its Teaching Fellowships, which underwrite the full cost of tuition starting with the MA Class of ’16 for up to five students pursuing a teaching career.

2014

Promoting early math

To encourage research into preschool math acquisition, increasingly seen as a powerful predictor of later learning, Prof. Deborah Stipek and others launch the DREME (Development and Research in Early Math Education) Network.

2014

Stipek returns as dean

Steele leaves to become provost of UC Berkeley. Stipek takes the reins while Stanford prepares a search for a new dean.

2015

Training entrepreneurial leaders

The first Executive Program for Education Leaders, latest in several joint ventures of the GSE and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, helps superintendents develop entrepreneurial leadership skills.

2015

Schwartz becomes dean

Daniel Schwartz, the Nomellini & Olivier Professor of Educational Technology and the GSE's Teacher of the Year for 2015, becomes dean. 

He aims to enhance the school’s capacity in research, theory and practice toward children most at risk of lacking access to learning. 

2015

Mathematical mindsets

Prof. Jo Boaler publishes Mathematical Mindsets, encouraging positive thinking about math and a new approach to math teaching. She co-founds Youcubed, a center at Stanford that provides resources for math teaching and learning.

2015

Alumni excellence

In partnership with the school, a group of dedicated alumni launch the Alumni Excellence in Education Award to recognize the outstanding contributions of GSE-trained teachers, principals, scholars, innovators and education leaders.

2016

Big data

Prof. Sean Reardon announces the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), an initiative aimed at harnessing data to help scholars, policymakers, educators, parents and other learn how to improve educational opportunity for all children. 

Some of the first studies map local inequities across the United States. The project highlights a new era in how big data can be used in education research.

2017

Graduate School of Education celebrates its first 100 years

The school rooted in Stanford's earliest days marks a century of leadership in teaching and learning.