John Rice is a Program Director and the Director of the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) West at WestEd.
REL West supports educators in California, Nevada, and Utah to increase their use of data and evidence in decision-making. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), REL West works with partners — including state departments of education, districts, and schools — to provide research and analytic assistance as they select or design new programs, strategies, or policies, and implement and evaluate them.
At WestEd, Rice has directed collaborative research projects in partnership with school districts that focused on increasing the college and career readiness of their graduates. He has also directed a number of large evaluations, including those for California’s resource and referral (R&R) centers for child care providers and their parents, Michigan’s School Improvement Grants (SIGs), and California’s Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). He has also provided coordination and quality assurance for WestEd’s evaluations of Teacher Quality Partnerships across three California State University campuses.
In addition, Rice has worked with WestEd’s Institutional Development team, reviewing and providing feedback on grant and contract proposals from across the organization, including those submitted to the National Science Foundation and IES.
Prior to joining WestEd, Rice managed evaluations of federal programs at IES, including randomized controlled trials of school-based mentoring and violence prevention.
Rice earned a PhD in developmental psychology from the University of California, Irvine.