Timeline

1911

Creating a textbook corpus

Because the emerging research field of education has few textbooks, Cubberley in 1911 begins writing and editing his own. The first of his Riverside Textbooks in Education is published in 1914. The series sells 3 million copies in three decades and ultimately pays for Stanford’s first School of Education building.

1916

Expanding influence

J. Harold Williams, '13, receives Stanford’s first PhD in education. He goes on to become a dean at UCLA and provost of UC Santa Barbara. 

1916

Terman and intelligence

Prof. Lewis Terman publishes his revision of French psychologist Alfred Binet’s intelligence test. In an era that prizes efficiency, the Stanford-Binet test brings Terman -- and Stanford -- worldwide acclaim as a way to allocate social and educational resources. 

Terman rejects criticism that the test is socially conditioned. His seemingly succinct “IQ,” or intelligence quotient, becomes a household word. The pitfalls of tracking individuals on this basis require decades to acknowledge and remedy.

1918

Teachers stream in

The new School of Education dominates course offerings in Stanford’s first campus-wide summer session. Many teachers and administrators enroll for career development, establishing a pattern that will continue for decades.

1919

The IQ era

Maud Amanda Merrill, PhD ’23, comes to Stanford. As longtime collaborator and author of a later revision of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, she trains thousands of people to administer the test.

1936

Disciplinary research focus

Historian of education Isaac James Quillen joins the faculty. As dean starting in 1954, he will bring world-caliber social scientists to the School of Education and raise its reputation for research.

1937

New branches of study

Prof. Rex Harlow, PhD '37, teaches the first U.S. class in higher education organization and management.

Harlow later made his mark in the field of public relations, founding journals and professional organizations, writing textbooks and Stanford curricula, creating a code of ethics and in many other ways elevating the field.

1943

Hanna in Washington

Hanna becomes Stanford’s Director of University Services. He employs his bent for rainmaking to negotiate for Stanford federal contracts for wartime training. His Washington experience sparks his interest in postwar international development, which in turn helps shift the focus of the school toward global concerns.

1946

With growing global role, more funding

Eurich helps found the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a powerful magnet for research dollars that is divested from the university in the 1970s amid concerns over its classified defense work. In 1948, he serves as acting university president after the sudden death of Donald Tresidder. 

Hear Eurich's oral history, conducted by the Stanford Historical Society. 

1951

Planning for the boom

Prof. James D. McConnell, known to his students as “Dr. Mac,” founds the School Planning Laboratory. Modular classrooms, flexible scheduling and data-driven facilities planning are all School Planning Lab innovations.

1954

Steeples of excellence

Quillen becomes dean. In line with University President Wallace Sterling’s aim to build “steeples of excellence” in a world-class research university, he hires eminent discipline-based scholars and emphasizes social-science inquiry.

1966

'Scholar-doers' for international development education: SIDEC

Prof. Paul Hanna founds the Stanford International Development Education Center (SIDEC) to study education as an aid to economic, political and social progress in developing countries. 

SIDEC and its successor master’s and doctoral programs in International Comparative Education (ICE) count among their alumni past presidents of Peru, the Maldives and Guatemala; the adviser of the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City; and ministers of education in Tanzania and Kenya as well as policy makers, researchers and education professors across the globe.

1966

Policy and research

H. Thomas James becomes dean. He furthers the school’s reputation in advanced training and social-science research, and his close connections with Stanford administration help secure its standing and funding within the broader university.

With such hires as Michael Kirst, a Washington policy analyst who later leads the California Board of Education, James adds a focus on policy that distinguishes the school today.

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

1974

Women's studies pioneer

Labor economist Prof. Myra Strober, founder of Stanford’s Center for Research on Women, is tenured by the School of Education. Strober's research and leadership yields new understanding of women's contributions to economic productivity and to the greater good. 

Hear Strober's oral history conducted by the Stanford Historical Society. 

Read her thoughts on work-family balance in her speech at the GSE's 2017 Commencement.

1986

Policy leader

Marshall S. Smith becomes dean. He diversifies the faculty and student body, ties their research more firmly to practice by involving the school in policymaking, and forges bonds within Stanford that protect the school during budget cuts. 

In 1990, Smith and Jennifer O'Day write a paper setting out the structure and arguments for standards-based education reform, an interest of then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. 

Smith leaves Stanford in 1993 to become President Clinton’s undersecretary of education. The research informs the education legislation that Clinton sends to Congress, where it passes in 1994.

1995

Giving youth a voice

Profs. Milbrey McLaughlin and Shirley Brice Heath win the $150,000 Grawemeyer Prize in Education for their book Identity and Inner City Youth: Beyond Ethnicity and Gender.

2000

Gardner Center opens

The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities, honoring one of Stanford's most influential alumni, opens with Milbrey McLaughlin as founding director.

As U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Gardner, ’33, MA ’36, founded the Title 1 program for low-income children. He served as president of the Carnegie Corporation; as chair of the National Urban Coalition, and as founder of Common Cause. His views and activism shaped groundbreaking endeavors including the White House Fellows Program, public television and Medicare.

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.

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. 

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.

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.