Jon Snyder's work has focused on issues of teaching quality, school reform and equity. He comes to Stanford from Bank Street College in New York.
Jon Snyder, an educator, administrator and researcher, has been named the new executive director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, or SCOPE.
Snyder joins Stanford after more than 12 years at Bank Street College of Education, which incorporates a Graduate School, as well as a preschool and primary school. He served first as dean of the Graduate School and then as chief academic officer of the College.
Snyder's work has focused on issues of teaching quality, school reform, and equity, which supports SCOPE's mission to close the opportunity gap in education by informing policy with rigorous research on successful education systems.
“Jon has made great contributions to the national education community as a leading practitioner and researcher. We’re delighted to have him join SCOPE to help move our research, policy analysis, and professional learning work forward,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, founder and faculty director of SCOPE.
Snyder has an impressive career in education to draw upon.
Prior to Bank Street, he was director of teacher education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, following roles as senior researcher at the National Commission on Teaching and American’s Future and associate director for research at the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and Teaching at Teacher’s College, Columbia University.
It was his desire to focus on long-term, comprehensive educational policy reform that brought him back to the west coast.
“To me, SCOPE is about all our children having the opportunity to pursue a future of their own choosing no matter the color of their skin or the language they speak or the income of their family or any other accident of birth," Snyder said. "We are about creating the conditions where high performing schools are the norm not the anomaly in each and every community. We are not alone in this effort, but we hold perhaps a unique niche in that we understand that the path to this future requires an intersection of the mutually interdependent realms of research, policy, and practice - and combine those realms in all the work that we do.”
Snyder grew up in the small farming community of Pullman, Wash. He received his undergraduate and master's degrees from Washington State University, and his doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. He began his career as an elementary school teacher.
At Bank Street, he oversaw an over $50 million budget that supported direct services for both the adult and children's programs.
Snyder's appointment at SCOPE, a center affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education, was effective Jan. 6.
“It is really an exciting privilege," Snyder says, "to join such a renowned institution and to work with such exceptional educators within SCOPE, the Graduate School of Education and across the campus.”
___
Lauren Scranton, a master's candidate in the POLS program at the GSE, is an intern in the school's communications office.
