Patrick Shields

Patrick M. Shields, Ph.D., director of SRI International's Center for Education Policy, is also acting vice president of the Education Division. Shields’ research focuses effective educational policies for economically poor and ethnically diverse populations. He has more than 20 years experience managing large-scale projects.

Currently, he is principal investigator of an ongoing 10-year study of the teacher workforce in California and of a national randomized trial assessing the efficacy of the National Writing Project. He recently completed a five-year study of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

His work examining effective teaching practices is reported in Teaching for Meaning in High-Poverty Classrooms (Teachers College Press) and Better Schooling for the Children of Poverty (McCutchan). Shields served on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Influence of Standards in Mathematics, Science, and Technology, as Senior Policy Advisor to the Center for Research on Educational Diversity and Excellence at the University of California, and as a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards Impact Research Group.

He is currently a member of the Committee of Visitors for the Center for Informal Learning and Schools and is a member of the editorial board of Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Shields received his Ph.D. in educational policy from Stanford University.