David Figlio Named Orrington Lunt Professor

EVANSTON, Ill. --- David Figlio, professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University, has been named the Orrington Lunt Professor.

Figlio's research on education and social policy, including influential work on school accountability, standards, welfare policy and policy design, has been published in numerous leading journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Law and Economics and Journal of Human Resources.

His current research involves evaluating the Florida Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, the largest school voucher program in the United States; conducting a large-scale study of school accountability in Florida, which involves collecting survey data on a census of public school principals in the state; and following children from birth through their school careers to study key questions regarding early childhood policy and inequality.

His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education and Health and Human Services, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropic Society, the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Spencer Foundation.

Figlio is a member of the executive board of the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research and serves as the inaugural editor of the official journal of the American Education Finance Association, Education Finance and Policy, published by MIT Press. He has served on numerous national education task forces and panels and has advised several U.S. states and nations on five continents on the design, implementation and evaluation of education policy.

Before joining the Northwestern faculty in 2008, Figlio taught at the University of Florida, where he was the Knight-Ridder Professor of Economics, from 1998 to 2008 and the University of Oregon from 1995 to 1998.

He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and associate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, from which he received a PhD in economics. At Northwestern he is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Research and holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Economics in addition to his professorship in the School of Education and Social Policy.