Mark Berends (Ph.D., Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, where he directs the Center for Research on Educational Opportunity (CREO). He has written and published extensively on educational reform, school choice, the effects of family and school changes on student achievement trends and gaps, and the effects of schools and classrooms on student achievement. His research focuses on how school organization and classroom instruction are related to student achievement, with special attention to disadvantaged students and school reforms aimed at improving their educational opportunities. Currently, he is conducting several studies on school choice, including an examination of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, parent decision making and satisfaction in a lottery-based study of charter schools, and how in-school enabling conditions and classroom instruction are related to student achievement gains in charter schools and traditional public schools.

Berends serves on numerous editorial boards, technical panels, and policy forums; he is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association; a former vice president of the American Educational Research Association's Division L, Educational Policy and Politics; and the AERA Program Chair for the 2014 annual meeting. His latest books are Examining Gaps in Mathematics Achievement Among Racial-Ethnic Groups, 1972–1992 (RAND, 2005), Charter School Outcomes (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008), Leading with Data: Pathways to Improve Your School (Corwin, 2009), the Handbook of Research on School Choice (Routledge, 2009), and School Choice and School Improvement (Harvard Education Press, 2011).