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Herbert J. Walberg (1937 – 2023)

Senior Fellow, Education

Herbert J. Walberg passed away on February 6, 2023. He was chairman emeritus of The Heartland Institute.

Dr. Walberg was a long-time chairman of the board at The Heartland Institute and a senior fellow for education policy. He was also a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, and a professor emeritus and University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focused on educational productivity and human accomplishments.

Dr. Walberg wrote or edited more than 60 books and 350 articles on such topics as the causes and effects of learning, teaching and instructional effectiveness, national comparisons of achievement, and educational measurement and evaluation, which have appeared in widely circulated journals, including Daedalus, Educational Leadership, Kappan, and Nature and in such newspapers as the Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Dr. Walberg was coauthor of several books published by or in association with The Heartland Institute, including We Can Rescue Our Children (1988), Education & Capitalism (2003), and Let’s Put Parents Back in Charge! (2004, 2005), and Rewards (2014).

Dr. Walberg was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Statistical Society (London), the American Psychological Association, the Australian Association for Educational Research, and appointed by President George W. Bush to the 12-member National Board for Education Sciences. Additionally, he served as the vice president of the International Academy of Education.

Dr. Walberg held research posts at the Educational Testing Service and the University of Wisconsin and taught at Harvard University. He was an adviser to former U.S. secretary of education William Bennett. He had been frequently called to testify before U.S. congressional committees and federal courts on educational matters.

Dr. Walberg earned his Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Chicago.