Thomas Hoffer, Ph.D., has been with NORC for over 20 years, and brings nearly three decades of experience working on the design, execution and analysis of education surveys. Most of Hoffer's analysis and writing has been oriented toward policy and program evaluation. He currently serves as Principal Investigator for the NSF's Graduate Research Fellowship Program evaluation. He is also the Senior Project Research Scientist for the NSF longitudinal panel Survey of Doctorate Recipients and the Survey of Earned Doctorates, a census of all individuals receiving a first research doctorate from a U.S. academic institution within a 12-month period. He recently completed the final report for the U.S. Department of Education's Growth Model Pilot Project evaluation, on which he was PI. Hoffer's educational background is in the sociology of education with an emphasis on education policy and quantitative research methods. He has led tasks of study design, including design of experiments; instrument development; data analysis; briefing of government officials; and report writing on several projects. He has several years of experience on projects in each of the main institutional areas of education: elementary, middle school, high school, college, and the nexus of formal education and the labor force. Mr. Hoffer has extensive experience with analyses of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) national longitudinal surveys, including Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class 1998-1999 (ECLS) , National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS-88), and High School &Beyond (HS&B). He worked on the ECLS-K contextual and assessment instrument development project. He also directed NORC's cognitive research project for ECLS, which involved observing Head Start, kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms; interviewing teachers, parents, and principals; and authoring a report for NCES/ED on the cognitive research project.

Hoffer received a B.A. in Sociology and Education from Beloit College, an M.A. in Education from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago.