Member Since 2011

Thomas J. Kane


Thomas Kane is Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, and Deputy Director within the U.S. education team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His work has influenced how we think about a range of education policies: test score volatility and the design of school accountability systems, teacher recruitment and retention, financial aid for college, race-conscious college admissions and the economic payoff of a community college education. From 1995 to 1996, Kane served as the senior staff economist for labor, education, and welfare policy issues within President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. From 1991 through 2000, he was a faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government. Kane has also been a professor of public policy at UCLA and has held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Published Articles & Media

Do Value-Added Estimates Identify Causal Effects of Teachers and Schools?

There is now substantial evidence that value-added estimates capture important information about the causal effects of teachers and schools

Never Diet Without a Bathroom Scale and Mirror: The Case for Combining Teacher Evaluation and the Common Core

Schools should seize this window of transition—when it is safest for teachers to ask for help (and for instructional leaders to offer it)—to completely reinvent the teacher evaluation process.

Climate Change and Value-Added: New Evidence Requires New Thinking

It is increasingly hard to sustain the argument that test-based measures have no role to play in teacher evaluations.

Capturing the Dimensions of Effective Teaching

Student achievement gains, student surveys, and classroom observations

Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness

Can classroom observations identify practices that raise achievement?

Photo Finish

Teacher Certification Doesn't Guarantee a Winner

Randomly Accountable

Failing to account for natural fluctuations in test scores could undermine the very idea of holding schools accountable for their efforts - or lack thereof

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