About the Center
The National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education was conceived at Stanford University in the 1990s by Henry M. Levin as a hub for nonpartisan information and analysis. With $275,000 in funding from three foundations (Achelis, Bodman, and Ford), Levin established NCSPE at Teachers College, Columbia University, upon moving there in 1999 following 31 years on the faculty at Stanford.
At the time, privatization of education was on the rise and at the heart of policy debate. Privatization came in the form of vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools, and for-profit management of both charter schools and conventional district schools. To provide solid grounding for policy debate, NCSPE began conducting research, holding conferences, and posting working papers.
While the terms of debate have since changed, the need for objective information and dispassionate analysis continues. As of 2024, NCSPE has posted 247 working papers, many of which went on to publication in academic journals. The center also publishes news commentaries, book reviews, and book excerpts. In addition, NCSPE has generated five books: Privatizing Education (Westview Press, 2001), edited by Henry M. Levin; School Choice and Diversity (Teachers College Press, 2005), edited by Janelle T. Scott; Privatizing Educational Choice (Routledge, 2005), by Clive R. Belfield and Henry M. Levin; Between Public and Private (Harvard Education Press, 2010), edited by Katrina E. Bulkley, Jeffrey R. Henig, and Henry M. Levin; and Education and the Commercial Mindset (Harvard University Press, 2016), by Samuel E. Abrams.
NCSPE Team
Henry M. Levin
Founder
Levin is the William Heard Kilpatrick Emeritus Professor of Economics and Education Emeritus at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the David Jacks Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Economics at Stanford University. He has published over 300 articles on the economics of education. Among his recent books are Between Public and Private: Politics, Governance, and the New Portfolio Models for Urban School Reform, co-edited with Katrina E. Bulkley and Jeffrey R. Henig (Harvard Education Press, 2010) and Economic Evaluation in Education: Cost-Effectiveness and Benefit-Cost Analysis (SAGE, 2017), co-authored with Patrick J. McEwan, Clive Belfield, A. Brooks Bowden, and Robert D. Shand. Levin taught at Stanford from 1968 to 1999 and at Columbia from 1999 to 2018. He earned his B.S. in economics and marketing from NYU and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Rutgers.