Christopher Brooks

Christopher Brooks is an expert in education finance, economic evaluation, and education and social policy research. Dr. Brooks leverages his knowledge in quantitative analysis policy analysis, education finance methods, and cost modeling to generate original evidence on the best approaches for efficiently expanding and equalizing social opportunities for individuals across the U.S.

Dr. Brooks leads projects and analyses across many topics, including applying cutting-edge methods to conduct comprehensive evaluations of K-12 education finance systems in Oregon and Ohio and work that expands these approaches into understanding the cost of community college (funded by the Gates Foundation). He also leads several cost studies and cost effectiveness evaluations for interventions in K-12 and higher education settings funded through the Institute for Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education, including Jobs for the Future’s Increasing Dual Enrollment Access and Success (IDEAS) program and the National Study of Special education Spending. Finally, Dr. Brooks applies his expertise in applied quantitative methods to help develop causal evaluation of innovative social policy interventions, including contributing to an evaluation of Dayton, Ohio’s Mediation Response Units impact on emergency response outcomes.

Dr. Brooks is also a leader in developing innovative tools for informing better education policy and strategic resource allocation in states and districts. This includes leading work on an interactive data tool for surveying school choice funding policies and practices in the U.S. and working with the Nevada Department of Education and Clark County Public Schools to develop AI-driven methods for leveraging existing finance data to generate new high-impact metrics for informing decision making processes. 

Dr. Brooks’s work has been published in top peer reviewed education journals including Education Researcher and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and has contributed chapters to The Economics of Equity in P12 Education and The Routledge Handbook of the Economics of Education.