Superintendent of Public Instruction

James W. Guthrie
Superintendent of Public Instruction
jguthrie@doe.nv.gov
Phone: 775/687-9217
Fax: 775/687-9202

Dawn for Nevada's Schools: The Cheerful Prospect (pdf)

Previously, he was the first appointed senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the George W. Bush Institute, a component of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, located on the Southern Methodist University campus (SMU) in Dallas, Texas, with a concurrent appointment as professor of education policy and leadership, in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at SMU.

Dr. Guthrie formerly was the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, and director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. From 1999 through 2009, he served as chair of Peabody College’s Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, the nation’s highest ranked university educational administration department. He instructed both undergraduate and graduate courses, and conducted research on education policy and finance.

He is founder and chairman of the board of Management Analysis & Planning, Inc. (MAP), a private sector management consulting firm specializing in public finance, organizational studies, and litigation support, located in Davis, California. He is the founder and president of Class Act Partners (CAP), a corporation specializing in the printed and electronic provision of research based materials for education professionals.

Previously a public school science teacher and, then a professor and Graduate School of Education Dean at the University of California, Berkeley for 27 years, Dr. Guthrie holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Stanford University, and undertook postdoctoral study in public finance at Harvard. He also was a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford Brookes College, Oxford, England, and the Irving R. Melbo Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California.

He has been a consultant to the governments of Armenia, Australia, Chile, Guyana, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Romania, and South Africa, and has had extensive experience in consulting for The World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, and the Organization of American States.

The author or co-author of 20 books, and more than 200 professional and scholarly articles, he is past president of the American Education Finance Association, former vice president of the American Education Research Association, served as editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Education, published in 2002, and is series editor of the multi-volume Peabody Education Leadership Series. He served as principal investigator for the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) at Vanderbilt University, a federally funded research center concentrating on educator performance incentives, and as policy director for the Center for Educator Compensation Reform (CECR), a Vanderbilt University federally funded effort to assist schools in altering their personnel practices and remuneration patterns.

Dr. Guthrie served as editor-in chief for the Oxford Bibliography Online, an Oxford University Press project to organize, appraise, and distribute evidence and information regarding all facets of education in the United States and worldwide.