Tom has served as the Faculty Director of the Gardner Center since 2018. He is also the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and a Research Associate with the Programs on Education, Children, and Health at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
His research focuses largely on the use of quantitative methods to inform contemporary issues of policy and practice. Recent examples include studies of curricular innovations in Bay Area school districts, studies of accountability policies, and research on the educational impact of school reopening policies on public school disenrollment.
In 2024, he received the Peter H. Rossi Award for Contributions to the Theory or Practice of Program Evaluation from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and the Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
He also serves on the editorial boards of the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Education Finance and Policy and as an Associate Editor at Economic Inquiry.
