William Gormley
Distinguished University Professor Emeritus
William Gormley is University Professor and Professor of Government and Public Policy Emeritus at Georgetown University. He is also co-director of the Center for Research on Children in the U.S. (CROCUS), a partnership between the McCourt School and the Psychology Department. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa. and taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before coming to Georgetown.
Gormley has written extensively on bureaucracies and efforts to reform them, by improving accountability mechanisms, especially those focusing on performance measurement. His books in this area include Taming the Bureaucracy: Muscles, Prayers and Other Strategies (Princeton University Press, 1989); Organizational Report Cards, with David Weimer (Harvard University Press, 1999); and multiple editions of Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance, with Steven Balla (Congressional Quarterly Press, 2017 and earlier). Taming the Bureaucracy won the Louis Brownlow Award for the Best Book on Public Administration from the National Academy of Public Administration.
For over two decades, Gormley has helped to shape the public debate over early childhood education policy. As principal investigator for the Tulsa preschool project, which began in 2001, he has published multiple articles on the short term and long term effects of Oklahoma’s universal pre-K program, in collaboration with Deborah Phillips and other faculty and students. These articles have appeared in Science magazine, Developmental Psychology, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and elsewhere. Gormley’s research on pre-K effects has resulted in coverage by the New York Times, the CBS Evening News, NPR, the PBS News Hour, USA Today, and many other news outlets. President Obama alluded to the Georgetown team’s pre-K research in his 2013 State of the Union Address.
Gormley is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and one of the co-founders of Hoya Kids, a day care center at Georgetown University. He is also a murder mystery author and a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.