Morgan Polikoff

Morgan Polikoff is a professor of education at USC Rossier. His areas of expertise include K-12 education policy; curriculum, standards, accountability, and assessment policy; survey research methods; and the impact of COVID-19 on American families' educational experiences.

Dr. Polikoff uses quantitative and mixed methods to study the design, implementation, and effects of curriculum, standards, assessment, and accountability policies. In 2021 he published his first book, Beyond Standards: The Fragmentation of Education Governance and the Promise of Curriculum Reform (Harvard Education Press). Recent work has investigated the adoption and use of core and supplemental curriculum materials to align with state standards and the use of surveys to explore voters' education policy preferences. Ongoing work focuses on the influence of curriculum materials on the implementation of standards in the classroom and the impact of COVID-19 on families’ educational experiences. He has been Co-Editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Associate Editor of the American Educational Research Journal and is on the editorial boards for Educational Researcher and AERA Open. He has published over 55 peer-reviewed journal articles and received (as PI or co-PI) more than $16 million in grants from federal and foundation sources. For his research achievements he received the AERA Early Career Award in 2017 and the AERA Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award in 2020. For his work with graduate students and postdocs he also received outstanding mentoring awards from USC Rossier and USC in 2018 and 2019, respectively. He chaired the faculty at USC Rossier from 2017 to 2019.

Dr. Polikoff received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education in 2010 with a focus on Education Policy and his Bachelors in Mathematics (minor in Secondary Education) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. He lives in Northeast LA with his husband, Joel, and their cattle dog, Indy.

• AERA Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award (2020)
• USC Mentoring Award for faculty mentoring graduate students (2019)
• USC Rossier Faculty Mentoring Award (2018)
• AERA Early Career Award (2017)
• AERA Open Outstanding Reviewer (2016, 2018, 2019, 2020)
• Association for Teacher Education Outstanding Research Award for article “Formal and informal mentoring: Complementary, compensatory, or consistent?” (2015)
• Educational Researcher Outstanding Reviewer (2015)
• Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis Outstanding Reviewer (2013, 2014)

• EDUC 658: Hierarchical Linear Modeling
• EDUC 705: Survey Design and Analysis
• EDUE 727: Research Methods II
• GESM 131g: Educational Access and Opportunity from Cradle to College

• Polikoff, M. S., Fienberg, M., Silver, D., Garland, M., Saavedra, A., & Rapaport, A. (2024). Who wants to say “gay?” Public opinion about LGBT issues in the curriculum. Journal of LGBT Youth.
• Polikoff, M. S., Silver, D., Garland, M., Saavedra, A. R., Rapaport, A., & Fienberg, M. (2022). The impact of a messaging intervention on parents’ school hesitancy during COVID-19. Educational Researcher, 52(2), 156-159.
• Haderlein, S. K., Saavedra, A. R., Polikoff, M. S., Silver, D., Rapaport, A., & Garland, M. (2021). Disparities in educational access in the time of COVID: Evidence from a nationally representative panel of American families. AERA Open, 7(1), 1-21.
• Polikoff, M. S., Rabovsky, S., Silver, D., & Wolfe, R. (2021). The equitable distribution of opportunity to learn in math textbooks. AERA Open, 7(1), 1-18.
• Polikoff, M. S., Silver, D., Garland, M., Saavedra, A. R., Rapaport, A., & Fienberg, M. (2022). The impact of a messaging intervention on parents’ school hesitancy during COVID-19. Educational Researcher, 52(2), 156-159.
• Polikoff, M. S., Campbell, S., Rabovsky, S., Koedel, C., Le, Q. T., Hardaway, T., & Gasparian, H. (2020). The formalized processes districts use to evaluate mathematics textbooks. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52(4), 451-477.
• Polikoff, M. S., Gasparian, H., Korn, S., Gamboa, M., Porter, A. C., Smith, T., & Garet, M. S. (2020). Flexibly using the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum to study alignment. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 39(2), 38-47.
• Hutt, E., & Polikoff, M. S. (2020). Toward a framework for public accountability in education reform. Educational Researcher, 49(7), 503-511.
• Aguilar, S., Polikoff, M. S., & Sinatra, G. (2019). Refutation texts: A new approach to changing public misconceptions about education policy. Educational Researcher, 48(5), 263-272.
• Polikoff, M. S., Le, Q. T., Danielson, R., Sinatra, G., & Marsh, J. (2018). The impact of Speedometry on student knowledge, interest, and emotions. Journal for Research on Educational Effectiveness, 11(2), 217-239.
• Koedel, C., Li, D., Polikoff, M. S., Hardaway, T. ,& Wrabel, S. L. (2017). Mathematics curriculum effects on student achievement in California. AERA Open, 3(1), 1-22.
• Polikoff, M. S., Hardaway, T., Marsh, J., & Plank, D. (2016). Who is opposed to Common Core and why? Educational Researcher, 45(3), 263-266.
• Polikoff, M. S. (2015). How well aligned are textbooks to the Common Core Standards in mathematics? American Educational Research Journal, 52(6), 1185-1211.
• Polikoff, M. S., & Porter, A. C. (2014). Instructional alignment as a measure of teaching quality. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(4), 399-416.
• Polikoff, M. S. (May 2012). Instructional alignment under No Child Left Behind. American Journal of Education, 118(3), 341-368.
• Polikoff, M. S. (Winter 2010). Instructional sensitivity as a psychometric property of assessments. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 29(4), 3-14.

Professor Polikoff's work focuses on the design, implementation, and effects of curriculum, standards, assessment, and accountability policies. He also studies public opinion on education and the impact of COVID on American families' educational experiences. 

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, “Opinion research on teaching controversial topics,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2023-2024, $200,000.

USC Schaeffer-Peterson Pandemic Policy Research Fund, “The long-term effects of COVID-19 and mitigation interventions on children’s well-being: Implications for education policy and future economic productivity,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2023, $173,125, supplemental $10,000 for “Education survey convening”. 

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Research Partnership to Instrument OER Math,” Co-Investigator (Principal Investigator Jennifer Hamilton), 2021-2023. $88,000.

Smith Richardson Foundation, “Miseducated: How bad ideas are undermining education, and what parents can do about it,” Principal Investigator, 2023-2024, $139,872. 

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development R01, “Neighborhood characteristics and neurodevelopment: Risk and protective factors, and susceptibility to stressors and school disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic,” co-Investigator (Principal Investigator Daniel Hackman), 2022-2027, $3,980,895.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, “Understanding America Study 2022: civic education and NSF RAPID3 administration supplement,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2022-2023, $200,000.

National Science Foundation, “RAPID: The Impact of COVID on Children’s Well-being in 2022: Continued Evidence from the Understanding America Study,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2022-2023, $200,000.

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, “The educational impact of COVID-19 on children and families,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2021-2022, $55,000.

National Science Foundation, “RAPID: The Impact of COVID on American Education in 2021: Continued Evidence from the Understanding America Study,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2021-2022, $198,148.

National Science Foundation, “RAPID: Exploring COVID and the Effects on U.S. Education: Evidence from a National Survey of American Households,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2020-2021, $199,620.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supplement to “COVID-19: US Data Collection for Household Response and Impact Monitoring,” Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2020, $50,000.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Characteristics of Coherent Instructional Systems and Their Relationship to Outcomes for Black, Latino, English Learner-designated, and Low-Income Students,” co-Principal Investigator (co-Principal Investigators Julia Kaufman, V. Darleen Opfer, Elaine Wang), 2018-2022, $2,300,000.

Ballmer Group, “AchievementNet Evaluation (subcontract from AchievementNet),” Principal Investigator (co-Principal Investigator Adam Kho), 2018-2022, $259,215.

International Baccalaureate, “Student Pathways Through Middle School, High School and Into Postsecondary Education: MYP Student Outcomes in a Large US Public School District,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Anna Saavedra), 2018, $65,000.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “Never Judge a Book By Its Cover, Use Student Achievement Instead,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Jon Fullerton), 2016-2018, $762,059.

Institute of Education Sciences, R&D Center on Standards in Schools, “Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL),” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Andrew C. Porter), 2015-2020, $10,000,000.

WT Grant Foundation, “Complex Equations: Algebra Instruction in the Common Core Era,” Principal Investigator (co-Principal Investigator Thurston Domina), 2014-2017, $447,503.

Smith Richardson Foundation, “Curriculum Adoptions and Effects on Student Achievement in California,” co-Principal Investigator (co-Principal Investigator Cory Koedel), 2014-2016, $159,992.

National Science Foundation, Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research, “An Online System for the Collection of Textbook Adoption Data,” Principal Investigator, 2014-2016, $299,942.

Mattel Children’s Foundation, “USC-Mattel Speedometry Phase II District Wide Study and Direct Impact Partnership," co-Principal Investigator (co-Principal Investigators Gale Sinatra & Julie Marsh), 2014-2016, $784,000.

Smith Richardson Foundation, "Making Standards-Based Reform Work: Textbook Alignment and the Common Core," Principal Investigator, 2013-2014, $124,132.

Mattel Children’s Foundation, "Innovative STEM Curriculum Using Hot Wheels," co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigators Gale Sinatra & Julie Marsh), 2013-2014, $230,000.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development R03, “Teacher Practice and Peer Conduct: Classroom Effects on Outcomes for Special Needs Students,” co-Principal Investigator (Principal Investigator Michael Gottfried), 2012-2014, $161,100.

American Educational Research Association Institute on Statistical Analysis for Education Policy: Mathematics Education and Equity (2012)

IES Summer Training Institute on Cluster-Randomized Trials (2010)