Michael Feuer

Biography

is Professor of Education and International Affairs and immediate past Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George Washington University, a role he held for 15 years. He is past president of the National Academy of Education and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Feuer came to GW in 2010 after 25 years in leadership roles at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. He was appointed by President Obama in 2014 to the National Board for Education Sciences, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Educational Research Association.

Feuer’s research has focused on the economics of education, international comparative assessments, teacher preparation, inequality and academic opportunity, science policy, use of research to inform policy, philanthropy, and civics. In addition to many edited volumes and journal articles, Feuer is the author of Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education (2006), and The Rising Price of Objectivity: Philanthropy, Government, and the Future of Education Research (2016), both published by Harvard Education Press; and Can Schools Save Democracy? Civic Education and the Common Good (2023), published by Johns Hopkins University Press. In addition to his many academic articles, Feuer’s essays, commentaries, book reviews, and poems have appeared in newspapers, blogs, and magazines in the US and abroad. He consults to governments and research organizations in Europe, Israel, and elsewhere. 

Feuer received his BA in English from Queens College (CUNY), the MA in public management from the Wharton School, and the PhD in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was on the faculty of Drexel University and Georgetown. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Regine, a physician certified in both ob-gyn and addiction medicine. The Feuers have two grown children.