Bio
Iris BenDavid-Hadar
Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University
Why my research matters
Where money goes in a school system shapes who gets a fair shot. My work asks how education budgets and funding formulae can be designed to both improve outcomes and narrow achievement gaps - not treat those as a trade-off. That question has taken me from a PhD dissertation on Israel’s achievement gap to advising Israel’s Ministry of Education on its national funding formula, testifying before the Knesset Education Committee, and reviewing UNESCO’s equity-in-financing profiles for Israel.
Academic bio
I am an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Bar-Ilan University. I hold a PhD from Bar-Ilan University (2008, supervised by Prof. Adrian Ziderman), an MA and BA from Tel Aviv University, and completed a post-doc at Stanford University’s School of Education (2009, hosted by Prof. Martin Carnoy). I have held visiting scholar positions at Columbia University (2015) and University College London (2023).
Over four theoretical phases, my research has developed: a composite, improvement-based method of resource allocation to schools; a framework integrating social justice theory with public finance; an account of education finance at the global level linking state competitiveness and social cohesiveness; and, most recently, the Middle-Line Model - a framework for escaping the traditional trade-off between competitiveness and cohesion in education finance policy. This work has been presented at venues including a US investment summit hosted by the Obama administration and, as keynote, at China’s Belt and Road Initiative higher education forum.
Research groups
My work sits at the intersection of state competitiveness and social cohesiveness, organized into three research groups:
- Competitiveness - STAC: international comparative research using large-scale secondary data (PIAAC, TALIS, PISA)
- Education Finance Policy - LEAD: resource allocation mechanisms, funding formulae, and equity analysis
- Cohesiveness - EDS: national-level policy research on inclusion, minorities, and equity of opportunity
I founded and head all three.
I have published over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, 19 book chapters, and two edited books, including Education Finance, Equality and Equity (Springer, 2018). See my full list of papers →
Contact & links
Email:
Iris.hadar [at] biu [dot] ac [dot] il
Affiliation: Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel