Steven F. Wilson

Steven F. Wilson is a senior fellow at Pioneer Institute, an education entrepreneur, policymaker, and writer.

Most recently, he cofounded the National Summer School Initiative to accelerate learning and build teacher capacity in the aftermath of the pandemic. Since its inception in 2020, NSSI has partnered with schools and districts to educate more than 150,000 students, including at hundreds of sites in New York City.

Earlier, Wilson founded and built Ascend Learning, a network of tuition-free, liberal arts charter schools in Central Brooklyn. The Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University identified Ascend a “gap-busting” network for its success in closing achievement gaps of race and income.

His first book, Reinventing the Schools: A Radical Plan for Boston, drove the development and passage of the Massachusetts charter school law. Learning on the Job: When Business Takes on Public Schools, won the Virginia and Warren Stone prize for an outstanding book on education and society.

His new book, on the future of school reform, will be published by Pioneer in 2025.