Mr. Levin has been deeply concerned with welfare of disadvantaged students ever since he criticized Coleman Report in 1966. In his view, bringing youngsters at low end into mainstream is by far most important effort in education because its outcome has greatest potential for impact or for and economic disruption. HENRY (Hank) Levin, currently William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, has had a three-part career in three areas with considerable overlap: finance and education, disadvantaged students, and privatization. From 1978 to 1984, Levin was director of Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance at Stanford University. In 1986, he became founding director of Accelerated Schools Project and remained its director until 1999, when he left Stanford University after 32 years to direct National Center for Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College in New York City. Growing up in New Jersey in 1950s, Levin was an indifferent student whose chief interests were athletics, particularly men's track, and his amateur radio (ham) station. The athletic interest continued through college, although Levin was quickly drawn into serious academic work in economics, graduating cum laude from New York University in 1960. In 1966, shortly after earning his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Levin went to work at Brookings Institution, where he focused on social economics: education, health, and welfare. That year Coleman Report, James Coleman's famous study of private schooling, was released. This report by a senior researcher reached some depressing conclusions about education reform, namely that spending more money on students, teachers, and school facilities has little effect. Levin and another young scholar, Samuel Bowles of Harvard University, took a careful look at report and concluded that it was a classic in terms of sloppy use of methodology. This sharp critique, first significant challenge to report, earned Levin a bit of notoriety and led to a position at Stanford University. Very quickly, Levin began working on economics of education - manner in which schools were funded and uses to which those funds were put - areas in which almost no one was specializing at time. There was some interest in human capital but almost no concentration on resource allocation and cost-effectiveness. This interest in economics of education led to establishment on Stanford campus of a federally sponsored Institute for Research on Educational Finance and Governance, which Levin directed. The institute examined such matters as fairness of school finance in states, comparison of private and public education, rising poverty rates, an increase in single-parent families, and arrival of immigrants with little education. Between 1978 and 1984, institute had a very strong influence on field, publishing about 50 refereed articles each year and supplying research background for several court cases on school finance. Levin became the first expert witness in Robinson v. Cahill, New Jersey case, and eventually became involved in Serrano case in California and in other school finance cases in which he pointed out that there were inequalities in sources of revenue, that these inequalities led to inequalities in education outcomes, and that these outcomes in turn had consequences for life chances of children. By 1984 federal Administration had adopted view that federally sponsored educational research subjects and conclusions should support Administration. The new Administration felt that since federal government was paying bill, research should back up its programs, among them tuition tax credits for private school attendance. …