Mira Debs is the Director of Yale University’s Education Studies Program and a lecturer in the Sociology Department.
Her research looks at how parents and communities construct social meaning through their schools and other communal sites. Her research, teaching, and policy interests include school integration, comparative international education, urban education, school choice, parent involvement, and progressive public schools.
Her research on public Montessori schools, the focus of Diverse Families, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in the Era of School Choice (Harvard Education Press, 2019) has been featured in numerous print outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Education Week and the Christian Science Monitor. She is a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Montessori Education (Bloomsbury 2023).
Her work has been published in many public and academic venues including the New York Times, The American Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, History of Education Quarterly, the American Educational Research Journal, Comparative Education, Cultural Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, and the Journal of Montessori Research.
Her research and educational outreach has been supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Brady Foundation and Wend Ventures.
In addition to her education research, Dr. Debs taught high school for five years in Boston-area public schools. She is a founding board member of Elm City Montessori School, a public Montessori school in New Haven, Connecticut, and she helped to start Montessori for Social Justice, a grassroots organization of Montessori educators.