TC Press is saddened by the passing of one of America’s foremost educational researchers, longtime Press author David C. Berliner.
Author, education luminary, and AERA Past President David C. Berliner passed away September 26, 2025.
Dr. David Berliner was Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He had been a visiting scholar at universities throughout the world and was the winner of numerous awards, most notably the E. L. Thorndike award in educational psychology, the distinguished contributions award of the AERA, the Friend of Education award of the NEA, and the Brock International Prize for distinguished contributions to education.
His life and work have been memorialized this week in remembrances from AERA, the National Education Policy Center, and Diane Ravitch. His most recent book, Public Education for Our Nation’s Democracy: Commentaries on Schooling in America, was published the day he passed away.
Below, we share an excerpt from Diane Ravitch, whose memories of Dr. Berliner can be read in full here.
We Have Lost a Dear Friend: David C. Berliner
David was one of the most honored research psychologists in the nation. You can open his resume online and see the many times he has received awards or served in prestigious positions. I won’t recite his bio.
Instead I want to praise him as a wise and insightful friend. I learned from him and was very happy that we forged a strong bond in the past few years.
David was an acerbic critic of the past two+ decades of what was called “education reform.” David laughed at the nonsensical but heavily funded plans to “reform” education by imposing behaviorist strategies on teachers, as if they were robots or simpletons.
David had no patience with the shallow critics of America’s public schools. He respected the nation’s teachers and understood as few of the critics did, just how valuable and under-appreciated they were.
But he did have patience with me. He appreciated my change of views and offered encouragement. Knowing that he had my back made me fearless.
—Diane Ravitch
Works Written or Edited by David C. Berliner
