Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant: Gene Glass

Gene Glass has had a profound influence on education over a span of five decades through his seminal work in meta-analysis, research methods, online publishing, and education policy analysis. Widely viewed as the originator of meta-analysis, his founding efforts spawned its massive application across multiple disciplines. His early meta-analytic research on the relationship between class size and achievement remains relevant still today. Glass was a pioneer of online publishing, creating one of the first ever peer-reviewed, online academic journals, Education Policy Analysis Archives. Placing equity at the center of his work, Glass has significantly impacted the narrative surrounding education reform through his penetrating analyses of policy and their underlying political motivations. In particular, he has exposed recent efforts to privatize or quasi-privatize public education through neoliberal reforms, such as charter schools and school vouchers. He is, without a doubt, among our generation’s greatest educational thinkers and influencers.