Dr. Paul Goren

Paul Goren has spent his career in positions at the intersection of education practice, policy, and research. Along with his work at the Forum on Democracy and Education, he currently serves as Director of the Northwestern Collaborative for Applied Research in Education (NCARE) – formerly the E4 Center - and Lecturer at the Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy. Between 2014-2019, he was Superintendent of Schools for the Evanston/Skokie (IL) School District 65 where he implemented early literacy curricular reforms, established climate teams and approaches to social/emotional learning and restorative justice in every building, and led a robust equity agenda that included racial identity training for 1400 employees over a 2-year period. 

Prior to joining District 65, Goren was the Senior Vice President for Program at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in Chicago. Previously he served as the Interim Chief for Strategy and Accountability for Chicago Public Schools while working as Executive Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. A former middle school social studies and math teacher and basketball coach, Goren worked on the senior administrative teams of the Minneapolis Public Schools and the San Diego Unified School District. He served for over a decade as Senior Vice president of the Spencer Foundation and as a Program Director for Child and Youth Development at the MacArthur Foundation. He also worked in the education policy studies group at the National Governors’ Association as Senior Policy Analyst, as Deputy Director, and then as Director. He held the Ian Axford Fellowship for Public Policy through New Zealand Fulbright serving for seven months in the NZ Ministry of Education to study policies impacting Maori children.

Goren graduated with a BA from Williams College, a Master of Public Affairs degree from the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas-Austin, and a PhD from Stanford University.