Kenneth A. Shores

Associate Professor

Dr. Kenneth A. Shores is an associate professor specializing in education policy in the School of Education at the University of Delaware, and he is affiliated with the UD Center for Research in Education and Social Policy. His research is focused on educational inequality and encompasses both descriptive and causal inference. To this end, his work addresses racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequality in test scores, school disciplinary policy, classification systems, and school resources. In addition, he has examined how improvements to school finance systems can reduce educational inequality and how vulnerabilities in school finance systems can contribute to it.

Dr. Shores was a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow, a Philanthropy and Civic Society Fellow, a Stanford Graduate Fellow, and an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Fellow. In 2018, he was the co-recipient of the National Council on Measurement in Education’s Annual Award for exceptional achievement in educational measurement.

He received his Ph.D. in education policy analysis from Stanford University. Prior to graduate school, he was a middle school teacher on the Navajo Nation.

Educational Background

Ph.D., Education Policy Analysis, Stanford University, Standford, CA, 2016
B.S., Economics, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, 2003

Professional Experience

Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Delaware, 2024-present
Assistant Professor, School of Education, University of Delaware, 2020–2024
Assistant Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, Pennsylvania State University, 2018–2020
Postdoctoral Fellow, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 2016–2018
Student, Teaching, and Research Assistant, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, 2010–2016
Middle School Teacher, Colegio Americano de Quito, Quito, Ecuador, 2008–2010
Elementary and Middle School Teacher, Pueblo Pintado Community School, Pueblo Pintado, NM, 2003–2008

Recent Professional Awards

2018 National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) Annual Award (corecipient), 2017