Rick Hess, an educator, political scientist, and author, is a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on K–12 and higher education. The author of
Education Week’s popular blog “
Rick Hess Straight Up,” he’s an executive editor of
Education Next, a senior contributor to
Forbes, and the founder and chair of the Conservative Education Reform Network. His many books include
The Great School Rethink,
A Search for Common Ground (with Pedro Noguera),
Letters to a Young Education Reformer,
Cage-Busting Leadership, and
Spinning Wheels. Rick began he career as a high school social studies teacher and has also taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Rice, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard. His work has appear in scholarly outlets such as
American Politics Quarterly and
Social Science Quarterly and in popular outlets including the
New York Times,
USA Today, the
Wall Street Journal, and the
Washington Post. He has a PhD in government and an MEd in teaching and curriculum from Harvard University.