Christopher Lubienski

Christopher Lubienski is a Professor of education policy and Director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. He is also a fellow with the American Educational Research Association, a fellow at the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Guest Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Global Studies of Educational Leadership and Collaboration at East China Normal University in Shanghai, and Adjunct Professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia, where he also served as Sir Walter Murdoch Visiting Professor. He is co-leader and convener of the Scholar Strategy Network’s K-12 Working Group.

His research focuses on education policy, reform, and the political economy of education, with a particular concern for issues of equity, access, and evidence use in policymaking. His current work examines (1) organizational responses to competitive conditions in local education markets, including analyses of their impacts on education opportunities, access, and equity, and (2) advocacy organizations and their ability to promote research evidence utilization as well as mis-information.

After earning a PhD in education policy and social analysis at Michigan State University, Lubienski held post-doctoral fellowships with the National Academy of Education and with the Advanced Studies Program at Brown University. He was named a Fulbright Senior Scholar for New Zealand, where he studies school policies and student enrollment patterns. He has authored both theoretical and empirical journal articles on questions of innovation and achievement in school choice systems, including peer-reviewed articles in top journals such as the American Journal of Education, the Oxford Review of Education, the American Educational Research Journal, the Journal of Education Policy, Educational Researcher, and the Congressional Quarterly Researcher. He is ranked as one of the top 2% of scientists world-wide in all fields by Stanford/Elsevier, and has been listed every year in Education Week’s annual list of most influential university-based education scholars.

His work has been funded by the federal Institute of Education Sciences, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Spencer Foundation. Lubienski has also been invited to testify before the U.S. Congress and state legislatures, and his work has been featured in news media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, La Liberacion, Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Times Education Supplement, and Business Week. His 2014 book, The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools (with co-author Sarah Theule Lubienski, University of Chicago Press), won the PROSE Award for Education Theory from the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence. His most recent book is Comparative Perspectives on School Segregation (co-edited with Laura Perry and Emma Rowe; Routledge, 2024).