Robert Balfanz is a research professor at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University School of Education, and director of the Everyone Graduates Center.
His work focuses on translating research findings into effective school improvement strategies and educational reforms. He publishes, conducts research, and organizes technical assistance efforts on secondary school reform, improving high school graduation and college readiness rates, early warning systems, chronic absenteeism, social-emotional learning, and instructional improvements in high-poverty schools.
Currently, he is leading a Cross-State High School Redesign Network with five states and 70 high schools, a Pathways to Adult Success Initiative with over 150 school districts, state departments of education, higher education institutions, and non-profits, and the GRAD Partnership a collaborative effort of non-profits and school districts to scale the use of high-quality student success (on-track) systems.
His work was featured in PBS Frontline’s The Education of Omarina and has been awarded the Alliance For Excellent Education’s Everyone a Graduate Award and the National Forum’s to Accelerate Middle-Grade Reform Joan Lipsitzs Lifetime Achievement award. In 2013 the Obama White House recognized him as a Champion for Change for African American education and he has served as an Education Fellow for the G.W. Bush Institute