Henry M. Levin received his degree from Rutgers in 1967. During his distinguished career he served as the David Jacks Professor of Higher Education and Economics at Stanford University before moving to his present position at Teachers College at Columbia University, where he is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education. Since 1999 he has been the director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. Dr. Levin is one of the world’s foremost figures in the economics of education and he has devoted his career to improving the educational opportunities of disadvantaged children, both through his scholarship and through the Accelerated Schools Project, which is dedicated to accelerating and enriching the educational opportunities of low-achieving students. He founded this project in 1986 and remained its Director until 2000. He has mentored and inspired countless others to work in this area, both as scholars and as contributors to the improvement of education.