Tom Loveless, Ph.D.

Director, Brown Center on Education Policy
Brookings Institution, Washington DC

Tom Loveless is Director of the Brown Center on Education Policy and Senior Fellow in Governmental Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Loveless's research focuses on education policy and the politics of educational reform. He is the author of recent articles in the Wilson Quarterly, Education Next, American Journal of Education, Educational Policy, Educational Leadership, Educational Administration Quarterly, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Loveless also authors The Brown Center Report on American Education, an annual report explaining important trends in achievement test scores. His op-eds have been published in The Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The Washington Post, USA Weekend, and Education Week. Loveless has appeared on NBC's Today show, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and Fox News.

Loveless's book, The Tracking Wars: State Reform Meets School Policy (Brookings Institution Press, 1999), examines two states' attempts to dismantle tracking in public middle schools. Loveless is editor of Conflicting Missions?: Teachers Unions and Educational Reform (Brookings Institution Press, 2000), examining the role of teachers unions in educational reform. He was editor of The Great Curriculum Debate: How Should We Teach Reading and Math? (Brookings Institution Press, 2001), presenting essays from scholars with sharply different perspectives on the school curriculum. Loveless recently co-edited (with John E. Chubb) Bridging the Achievement Gap (Brookings Institution Press, 2002), a collection of papers on programs which have successfully reduced the gap in academic performance between white students and their African-American and Hispanic peers.

Loveless holds a Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago, an M.A. in special education from California State University, Sacramento, and an A.B. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1979 to 1988, Loveless was a classroom teacher in the San Juan Unified School District, near his home town of Sacramento, California. While teaching sixth grade, he served on numerous state and local curriculum committees. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1992, Loveless joined the faculty of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he served as both assistant and associate professors of public policy until 1999.

Loveless was selected as a National Academy of Education Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow in 1995. He is currently on advisory boards of the American Journal of Education and several educational organizations, including a charter school in Massachusetts. Loveless is also an associate of the Program on Education Policy and Governance and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, both at Harvard.