User Profile

Principal, Education First Consulting

John M. Luczak is a principal at Education First Consulting. Currently he is working with several Race to the Top winning states to analyze and improve the effectiveness of their pilot, training, and teacher support programs. Prior to joining the Joyce Foundation, Luczak was the education program manager at the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which works to close achievement gaps through policy-oriented approaches to improving teacher quality, expanding access to high-quality early childhood education, and supporting charter schools and technological advances. Luczak worked at the Joyce Foundation beginning in 2004, with a brief leave of absence to work in the Illinois Governor's office on the state's 5th-place Phase I Race to the Top application. He helped develop Illinois' performance evaluation reform act and alternative certification legislation that were passed in January 2010, and he currently serves on the Governor's P-20 Council and the state's Performance Evaluation Advisory Council. Luczak worked from 1997 to 2000 for the U.S. Department of Education, first as a special assistant to the deputy secretary and then as director of policy for the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century. He previously worked for SRI International on curriculum reform and teacher quality issues, for the Ravenswood City School District, and as a high school social studies teacher in Providence, RI, where he also started several mentoring programs as an undergraduate student at Brown University. Luczak has a Ph.D. and M.A. from Stanford University in education administration and policy analysis. He is a Fellow of the fourth class of the Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.