Biography
Tom Luschei is an associate professor in CGU’s School of Educational Studies, where he teaches courses on education in developing countries, urban education in the United States, and teacher quality and teacher policy. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University and a Master’s of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin. He came to CGU in 2010 from Florida State University, where he taught courses on comparative education policy, education and culture, education and economic development, immigrant education policy, and international development education. He also led international educational research and development efforts at FSU’s Learning Systems Institute, including a 5-year, $1.84 million project funded by the United States Agency for International Development to improve teaching and learning in Indonesia. Through the Decentralized Basic Education in Indonesia project, Luschei and FSU colleagues worked with seven universities in four Indonesian provinces to improve teacher education and faculty research capacity, as well as to train Indonesian graduate students in the United States.
Luschei’s research interests include international and comparative education, the economics of education, teacher labor markets and teacher quality, teacher-related policies in Latin America and Southeast Asia, and the cross-national study of immigrant student achievement. He has conducted research on educational issues in Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Uruguay. The primary focus of his research is the impact and availability of educational resources—particularly high-quality teachers—among economically disadvantaged children. Luschei’s research has appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including the American Educational Research Journal, the Comparative Education Review, the International Journal of Educational Development, the Latin American Journal of Research in Mathematics Education, and Prospects, UNESCO’s Quarterly Review of Comparative Education.
Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., Luschei worked as a bilingual elementary, high school, and adult education teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he taught students ranging in age from six to eighty-four. At the graduate level, he has been recognized several times for excellence in teaching, and in 2010 he was nominated for a Florida State University Graduate Teaching Award.
In addition to his research and teaching, Luschei has worked as an educational consultant for the World Bank, UNICEF, and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, and as an education policy advocate for CARE USA. In 2009, he assisted Dr. Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru, in the development of a “New Social Agenda for Latin America,” a comprehensive plan to promote democracy and development in the region. In 2011, he was elected to serve a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the Comparative and International Education Society.
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2013 Claremont Graduate University 
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