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Cliff Winfield Stone was born in Wisconsin in 1874. After graduation from the State Normal School at Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1899 he later attended Columbia University where he took the B.S. in 1904 and the Ph.D. in 1908. He served as a teacher, school principal, and director of teaching in such diverse places as Indiana, New York City, Virginia, and Iowa. During World War I Dr. Stone was a member of the American Expeditionary Force University at Beaune, France. Directly following his service in France he came to Washington State University as Professor of Education. He served in this capacity from 1920 to 1946 when he retired as Professor Emeritus of Education.

An early pioneer in testing children's arithmetical abilities, Dr. Stone published a work on this subject in 1908 which he followed several years later with a series of reasoning tests in arithmetic. The New Stone Reasoning Tests in Arithmetic (1927) was published by Columbia University's Teachers' College. His knowledge in this field served him well when he chaired the Washington Education Association's school survey of the graded school and the one-room "little red schoolhouse" which was typical in rural areas of Washington State. The study was to survey and then compare progress made by pupils of one-room schools with progress made by pupils of equal ability from graded schools. Dr. Stone completed such a study, albeit on a limited basis, in 1927 (cf. Journal of Educational Research, November, 1927). The state-wide survey he and his associates made was published as " The Subject Progress of Pupils in Different Types of Schools" in the Washington Education Journal, April 1930.