Williamson M. Evers

About

Williamson M. Evers was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution where he specialized in research on education policy especially as it pertained to curriculum, teaching, testing, accountability, and school finance. Evers was head of the “agency action team” for the U.S. Department of Education in the Trump transition  from early September 2016 through January 2017. He was the US assistant secretary of education for planning, evaluation, and policy development from 2007 to 2009. From July to December 2003, Evers served in Iraq as a senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority and ran, with colleagues, the K-12 system in that country. He was a member of the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education from its beginning in 1999 until it wrapped up in 2014.

Former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Evers to the California State Academic Content Standards Commission in 2010. In 1996 Governor Pete Wilson appointed Evers to the earlier California State Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards. He is the only individual to have served on both standards commissions, both of which proposed the subject matter that students should learn in each grade.

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

Among his recent publications are:

• No Exit, No Voice: The Design of the Common Core (2015)
• Federal Overreach and the Common Core (2015)
• Chapter on high-spending, low-performing school districts in Courting Failure (2006)
• Mathematics chapters in Reforming Education in Florida (2006) and in Reforming Education in Arkansas (2005)
• Chapter on fixing failing schools in Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child (2005)
• Testing Student Learning, Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness (coeditor, 2004)
• Chapter on curriculum in Our Schools and Our Future (2003)

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.

Evers received his BA (1972), MA (1978), and PhD (1987) degrees in political science from Stanford University.

His research papers are available at the Hoover Institution Archives.