biographical information

Henry M. Levin is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, a nonpartisan entity <www.ncspe.org>. He is also the David Jacks Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Economics at Stanford University where he served from 1968-99 after working as an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He is a specialist in the economics of education and human resources and has published 16 books and almost 300 articles on these and related subjects. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences and at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Tel Aviv, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Beijing University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He has served in Fulbright Professorships at the University of Barcelona, Autonoma, and at the Universidad Metropolitana de Mexico, and as Wei Lun Visiting Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

    Levin was the President of the Evaluation Research Society and the recipient of its Gunna Myrdal Prize for Contributions to the Field of Evaluation. He is the former editor of the Review of Educational Research. In 1991 the New York Times named him one of nine national leaders for "Innovation in Education". In 1992 he received the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Contributions to Education. He has been a member and President of the Palo Alto (California) School Board and has been inducted as a Guest Professor at Beijing University. He is also on the Board of Trustees of the Educational Testing Service and the Vice President of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) www.cies.ws to become President in 2008.. At present Levin is doing research on educational reform, educational vouchers, cost-effectiveness analysis, financing educational equity, and educational privatization.

    From 1986-2000 Levin served as the Director of the Accelerated Schools Project <www.acceleratedschools.net>, a national school reform initiative for accelerating the education of at-risk youngsters. There are presently over 1,000 Accelerated elementary and secondary schools in some 40 states with 50 schools in Hong Kong. His Most recent books are: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Methods and Applications (Sage Publications, 2000), Privatizing Education (Westview, 2001), and Privatizing Educational Choice, 2005..