This installment draws on a 2015 interview with Mike for highlights of “what Mike has…learned.” Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) asked a handful of its top researchers to reflect on the most important conclusions, implications, or lessons from their bodies of work. By the time of the interview, Mike was serving his fourth term with Jerry Brown as President of the California State Board of Education.

We start this fourth installment of “Conversations With and About Mike” with him reflecting on his 50+ year career. In it, Mike gives us a roadmap for much of the content and trajectory of his career as well as direct evidence of his character and charm.

We start this third installment by listening to Jerry Brown again, in his final days as governor now responding to one of my final questions in that interview: “Is there anything you and Mike have done [in your recent education reform policy] that you would like to see being done in any other states?”

We turn again to Governor Brown’s reflections during his last Friday in office. After working side-by-side with Mike for four-and-a-half decades, he offers additional insights about their time together, their relationship, and some of their most notable challenges and accomplishments.

I’ve started this Mike Kirst Biography Multi-Media Project — not only for education policy researchers — but for all who work in or care about America’s public schools. The first installation includes recorded insights about Mike from an interview I had with Jerry Brown during his last Friday day in office on January 4, 2019.