I’m a PhD candidate specializing in history and education policy at the Stanford University School of Education. I am interested in the historical relationship between schools, the law, and education policy. In particular, my research examines the way in which the law has defined the purpose, organization, and success of public education in America through the creation of standards and the use of quantification. I explore this issue (and others) in my dissertation: Certain Standards: How Efforts to Establish and Enforce Minimum Education Standards Transformed American Schooling (1870-1980), which focuses on three specific historical cases of standard setting--compulsory school law litigation in the late 19th century; the creation, adoption, and diffusion of the GED in the 1940s; and minimum competency testing in the 1970s. My dissertation was completed thanks to the steady guidance of David Labaree, Mitchell Stevens, Leah Gordon, and Bill Koski. Prior to my dissertation work, I received an MA in History from Stanford University and a BA in History from Yale University.