At the Gardner Center, we focus on questions our community partners raise about issues that matter to youth. Our interdisciplinary research team represents expertise in design and methods, schools and school districts, youth development, community engagement, and education policy. We foster a collaborative approach to research in which we work alongside our community partners. Practitioners and policymakers can then use findings from this research to effect change.
Milbrey McLaughlin, the David Jacks Professor of Education and Public Policy, founded the Gardner Center at Stanford in 2000. It is the only organization to which John W. Gardner lent his name.
For most of his 29 years in education, Robert Eiseman worked in California public schools that are largely unknown to outsiders: alternative schools set up to help kids who have fallen behind academically. Many of their students are homeless, in foster care, newly released from prison or learning English as a second language.
