Benjamin West

Benjamin West designs and leads large-scale education research and evaluation studies focused on educator workforce development, school organizational conditions, and policy-relevant measurement systems. His work examines how district and school contexts shape educator retention, instructional practice, and student outcomes, with particular emphasis on school climate, mentoring and induction, performance evaluation, and professional learning.

West serves as principal investigator or project director on state- and foundation-funded projects, including evaluations of statewide mentoring and induction initiatives, educator performance evaluation systems, collaborative planning time for educators, redesigns of educator working conditions surveys, and multi-state studies estimating design parameters for education impact evaluations.

Methodologically, West specializes in psychometrics, causal inference, and applied quantitative methods, including item response theory, multilevel modeling, and quasi-experimental designs. His research contributes to both substantive education policy questions and methodological discussions around construct validity, statistical reliability, and practical decision-making in applied research settings.

His work has been supported through research grants, contracts, and internal investments and conducted with federal and state education agencies, school districts, and external research organizations, including the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the Michigan Department of Education, the Illinois State Board of Education, Oakland Unified School District, the CORE Districts, and the William T. Grant Foundation. West’s scholarship has been published in peer-reviewed outlets, including the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, and contributes to broader scholarly conversations reflected in outlets such as American Educational Research Association Open (AERA Open).