News Update

National organization honors former state board President Michael Kirst

Former State Board of Education President Michael Kirst is this year’s recipient of the Education Commission of the States’ James Bryant Conant Award, which recognizes individual contributions to public education. In announcing the selection Thursday, the commission cited Kirst’s “unwavering commitment to improving school finance systems to serve students more equitably.”

Michael Kirst

The commission, an interstate body that provides states with research and policy analyses, will present the award to him in October. Conant, for whom the award was named,  was a former president of Harvard University who laid the groundwork for the commission’s founding in the mid-1960s.

Kirst, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, served 16 years as board president and education adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown during Brown’s four terms as governor, including from 2011 through 2018.

Kirst is most identified with the Local Control Funding Formula, the 2013 law championed by Brown that ties extra funding for districts to the numbers of “high-needs” students they serve: low-income students, English learners, foster and homeless children. Kirst co-authored a paper that proposed the formula in 2007 and then oversaw its implementation. The equity-based funding system was unusual in that the Legislature  adopted it without a court order or pressure of litigation.

Kirst led the board though a decade of change, in which the state adopted a new accountability system, school improvement measures, along with new academic standards, frameworks and assessments.

Kirst is currently a senior fellow in residence at the Learning Policy Institute in Palo Alto, which was founded by Stanford professor emeritus Linda Darling-Hammond, who has succeeded Kirst as state board president.

The state board will acknowledge Kirst’s honor at its board meeting on Wednesday.