Walberg, Herbert J.

(b. 1937, Chicago, Illinois). Ph.D. Educational Psychology, University of Chicago; M.Ed., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; B.Ed., Chicago State University.

Walberg is Research Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

For four decades, Walberg has contributed to the meta-analyses of achievement effects of methods and conditions of education. He has been an advisor and evaluator for many public and private agencies in the [Page 448]United States, Israel, Sweden, Japan, and other countries. Walberg is called frequently to provide expert testimony before Congress and federal district and state courts.

In his research, Walberg employs experiments and analyses of large national and international data sets to examine the factors in homes, schools, and communities that promote learning and other human accomplishments. For the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, he carried out comparative research in Japanese and American schools. For the U.S. Department of State and the White House, he organized a radio series and a book about American education that were distributed in 74 countries.

His main intellectual influences are Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Benjamin Bloom, Benjamin Wright, Chester Finn, Margaret Wang, Susan Paik, and Arthur Reynolds.

Walberg chaired the scientific advisory group for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development project on international educational indicators. He also advised UNESCO and the governments of Israel, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom on education research and policy. He currently chairs the board of Chicago's Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank.

Walberg is Coeditor of the International Encyclopedia of Education (currently in its fifth edition). He is Editor of booklets on “what works” practices that are distributed in hard copy to education leaders in more than 150 countries and are also available on the Internet through UNESCO. He was recently appointed Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is a fellow of four academic organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Association, and the Royal Statistical Society. Walberg is also a founding Fellow and Vice President of the International Academy of Education, headquartered in Brussels.