Mark Berends

Mark Berends is the Hackett Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives and also a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, where he directs the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO). His research interests include school organization and classroom instruction and their relationship to student outcomes, with special attention to educational inequalities. His studies have included school choice, comprehensive school reform, ability grouping and tracking, the effects of family and school changes on student achievement trends, and the effects of schools and classrooms on student achievement. Within this agenda, he has applied a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods to understand the impact of school reforms on teachers and students. Currently, Berends is conducting several studies on school choice: an examination of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program (voucher); parent decision making and satisfaction in a lottery-based study of Colorado charter schools; and how school organizational and instructional conditions are related to student achievement gains in charter, private, and traditional public schools. His latest books are School Choice at the Crossroads: Research Perspectives (Routledge, 2019), Handbook of Research on School Choice, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 2020), and the International Handbook of the Sociology of Education (SAGE, 2023). Berends obtained his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.