Paul Hill

Director and Research Professor

crpe@u.washington.edu

Paul T. Hill is the Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education and a Research Professor at the University of Washington Bothell.

Dr. Hill's current work on public education reform focuses on portfolio strategies for school district management, school choice and charter schools, finance, and accountability. He chairs the National Charter School Research Project and leads its Charter School Achievement Consensus Panel. He also chaired the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education.

Dr. Hill is author of Learning as We Go: Why School Choice Is Worth the Wait (Hoover, 2010), editor (with Julian Betts) of the Consensus Panel�s volume, Taking Measure of Charter Schools: Better Assessments, Better Policymaking, Better Schools (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), and editor of Charter Schools Against the Odds (Hoover, 2006). His recent reports include Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities and Performance Management in Portfolio School Districts.

Dr. Hill works closely with city and state leaders and has written a series of books designed as resources for mayors and community leaders facing the need to transform their urban public school systems. The books, published by Brookings, include Making School Reform Work: New Partnerships for Real Change (2004), Charter Schools and Accountability in Public Education (2002), It Takes A City: Getting Serious About Urban School Reform (2000), and Fixing Urban Schools (1998).

From 2000-2004, Dr. Hill led a series of studies on school and district leadership, funded by a major grant from the Wallace Foundation. This work suggests how alternative governance systems can transform public education leadership and attract high-ability people into those roles.

Dr. Hill is lead author (with Lawrence Pierce and James Guthrie) of Reinventing Public Education: How Contracting Can Transform America�s Schools (University of Chicago Press, 1997). The book concludes that public schools should be operated by independent organizations under contract with public school boards, rather than by government bureaucracies. These ideas profoundly influenced the Education Commission of the States 1999 report, "Governing America's Schools."

Before joining the University of Washington faculty, Dr. Hill worked for 17 years as a Senior Social Scientist in RAND�s Washington office, where he served as Director of Washington Operations (1981-87) and Director of the Education and Human Resources program (1979-80). He conducted studies of site-based management, governance of decentralized school systems, effective high schools, business-led education reforms, and immigrant education. He also contributed to studies of defense research, development, and acquisition policy.

As a government employee (1970-77), Hill directed the National Institute of Education's Compensatory Education Study (a Congressionally mandated assessment of federal aid to elementary and secondary education) and conducted research on housing and education for the Office of Economic Opportunity. He also served two years as a Congressional Fellow and Congressional staff member.

Dr. Hill is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Brookings Institution�s Economic Studies Program. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Ohio State University and a B.A. from Seattle University, all in political science.