Rate My Professor Marcus Winters

Dr. Marcus A. Winters is a professor and chair of the Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Department at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, where he also serves as faculty director of the Wheelock Educational Policy Center. He earned a PhD in Economics and an MA in Economics from the University of Arkansas, along with a BA in Political Science from Ohio University. Winters's research centers on educational policy, emphasizing school choice, accountability measures, and policies affecting teacher quality. His scholarship explores topics such as teacher retention, charter school impacts, grade retention policies, racial representation in teaching, and special education enrollment patterns.

Winters has published extensively in top-tier journals, including the Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, and Economics of Education Review. Notable works include "Service delivery models: Impacts for students with and without disabilities" (Educational Researcher, 2025), "The Effects of Test-based Retention on Student Outcomes over Time: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida" (Journal of Public Economics, 2017), "Does Attending a Charter School Reduce the Likelihood of Being Placed into Special Education? Evidence from Denver, Colorado" (Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2017), "Representation in the Classroom: The Effect of Own-Race Teachers on Student Achievement" (2015), and "Public High School Graduation and College-Readiness Rates: 1991-2002" (2005). He has contributed articles to major outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today. Winters has testified before the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee on teacher quality (2010) and the Ohio Senate Education Committee on Florida's test-based promotion policy (2012), and presented at the University of Colorado Denver's Education Policy Networking Series (2015). His honors include a 2019 William T. Grant Foundation research grant for English immersion teacher training study, promotion to full professor in 2023, and rankings among the top influential education policy scholars in Education Week's Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.