Mark Berends is associate professor of public policy and education at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University; director of the National Center on School Choice, funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences; and the vice president of the American Educational Research Association's Division L, Policy and Politics in Education. His areas of expertise are the sociology of education, research methods, school effects on student achievement, and educational equity. His latest books are Examining Gaps in Mathematics Achievement Among Racial-Ethnic Groups, 1972-1992 (2005, RAND), Charter School Outcomes (2008), and Handbook of Research on School Choice (forthcoming, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates). Berends received his PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
