Rate My Professor Joshua McGee

Joshua McGee serves as Associate Professor of Education Reform and 21st Century Endowed Chair in Accountability and Transparency in the Department of Education Reform within the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He is also Associate Director of the Office for Education Policy and Founding Director of the Arkansas Policy Lab. McGee holds a Ph.D. in Economics (2011), M.S. in Industrial Engineering (2007), and B.S. in Industrial Engineering (2003), all from the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on teacher pensions and retirement behavior, public education policy including charter schools and school finance, education data analysis, policy evaluation, and economic impacts of teacher attrition and school district consolidation. Previously, he served as Chief Data Officer for the State of Arkansas (2020–2023), Executive Vice President at Arnold Ventures (2011–2018), Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (2015–2020), and Chairman of the Texas State Pension Review Board (2015–2019). He has provided expert testimony and technical assistance in more than 50 jurisdictions nationwide and holds directorships at MDRC and the Equable Institute. McGee participated in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ad hoc panel on A Vision and Roadmap for Education Statistics (2020–2022) and has refereed for journals such as Educational Researcher, Education Finance and Policy, and Journal of Pension Economics and Finance.

McGee's influential scholarship includes 'Teacher Pension Incentives, Retirement Behavior, and Potential for Reform in Arkansas' (with Robert Costrell, Education Finance and Policy, 2010), 'Growth Networks' (with Raja Kali, Javier Reyes, and Stuart Shirrell, Journal of Development Economics, 2013), 'Cross-Subsidization of Teacher Pension Costs: The Case of California' (with Robert Costrell, Education Finance and Policy, 2019), 'Rethinking the Structure of Teacher Retirement Benefits: Analyzing the Preferences of Entering Teachers' (with Marcus Winters, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2019), 'Teachers’ Willingness to Pay for Retirement Benefits: A National Stated Preferences Experiment' (with Dillon Fuchsman and Gema Zamarro, Economics of Education Review, 2023), and 'Evidence on the Relationship Between Pension-Driven Financial Incentives and Late-Career Attrition: Implications for Pension Reform' (with Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, and Kris Holden, ILR Review, 2024). His work has earned recognition in Rick Hess's annual Edu-Scholar rankings of top education scholars in 2025 and 2026. Awards include Kentucky Colonel commissioned by the Governor of Kentucky (2015) and the Doctoral Academy Fellowship from the University of Arkansas (2007–2008).