Williamson M. Evers (on leave)
Research Fellow

Expertise: Education policy, especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing, and accountability from kindergarten through high school; Iraq reconstruction

Williamson M. Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Institution's Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, is currently on leave while serving as the U.S. assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation and policy development in Washington, D.C. He was appointed to his federal post by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007. Evers specializes in research on education policy ­especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing, accountability, and school finance from kindergarten through high school. From July to December 2003, he served in Iraq as senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Evers was an education policy adviser and a leader of education-community supporters during President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and he served as a member of the education advisory committee for the transition. From 2001 to 2007, Evers served as an appointee of President Bush on the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, which selects the nation's top high school seniors based on their achievement in academics and the arts. In addition, Secretary of Education Rod Paige named Evers to the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board, on which he served until Congress reorganized educational research activities in late 2002. During 2005-06, he also served on the Mathematics and Science Scientific Review Panel of the U. S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences.

Governor Pete Wilson appointed Evers to the California State Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, where he served from 1996 to 1998, throughout the life of the commission. This commission drafted grade-by-grade standards for reading, writing, mathematics, history–social studies, and science in the state's public schools. While a commissioner, Evers was on the committees that developed mathematics and science standards.

Evers also served from 1998 to 2007 as a member of the California state standardized testing and reporting system's content review panels for history and mathematics. These two panels oversee all proposed standards-based test questions for these subjects for the statewide tests given to California children in the public schools, grades 2–11. He also served on the panel that reviews the history texts considered for use in California schools, as well as on the panels that proposed grading guidelines for California and Texas's history standards tests.

Evers was a member from 1999 to 2007 of the policy board of the California History–Social Science Project. This state-funded project provides subject-matter training to teachers of history and social studies in kindergarten through 12th grade in the state's public schools. The project is based at the University of California at Davis.

Evers was elected in November 2004 to the Santa Clara County Board of Education, on which he served until his February 2007 nomination as U.S. assistant secretary of Education. He is the immediate past president of the board of directors of the East Palo Alto Charter School, a board on which he had served from 1997 until 2004.

Among his recent publications are:
--the chapter on high-spending, low-performing school districts in Courting Failure (2006);
--the mathematics chapters in Reforming Education in Florida (2006) and in Reforming Education in Arkansas (2005);
--the chapter on fixing failing schools in Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child (2005);
--Testing Student Learning, Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness (coeditor, 2004);
--the chapter on curriculum in Our Schools and Our Future (2003);
--Teacher Quality (coeditor, 2002);
--School Accountability (coeditor and co contributor, 2002);
--School Reform: The Critical Issues (coeditor, 2001);
-- the chapter on standards and accountability in A Primer on America's Schools (2001);
--What's Gone Wrong in America's Classrooms (editor and contributor, 1998).

He has written opinion columns that have appeared in Education Week, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor.

He has also published work on such policy issues as liberty of the press, community service, and criminal justice. He edited National Service (1990) and is the author of the monograph Victims' Rights: Responsiveness, Restitution, and Retribution (1996).

He was editor in chief (1976–80) of Inquiry Magazine, published by the Cato Institute, and managing editor (1986–91) of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. He was a member of the editorial board of Education Next (formerly Education Matters) from 2000 to 2007.

Additionally, Evers has been a research fellow of the Independent Institute and an adjunct fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Evers was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution from 1989 to 1994 and a national fellow at the institution from 1988 to 1989. He was a visiting assistant professor at Emory University from 1987 to 1988 and an adjunct associate professor at Santa Clara University from 1995 to 1998.

Evers received his B.A. (1972), M.A. (1978), and Ph.D. (1987) degrees in political science from Stanford University.