Note: This judge recused himself of the final two rounds of judging due to his confirmation as the Director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Dept of Education in March 2018.

Mark Schneider was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) on March 23, 2018. Before joining IES, Schneider was a vice president and an institute fellow at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and president of AIR's College Measures. Prior to joining AIR, he served as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics from 2005 to 2008.

Schneider is the author or editor of numerous articles and books on education policy. His most recent book, The University Next Door: What Is a Comprehensive University, Who Does It Educate, and Can It Survive?, edited with KC Deane, was published in 2014 by Teachers College of Columbia University. Other books include Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education, edited with Andrew Kelly and published in 2012 by The Johns Hopkins University Press; Accountability in American Higher Education, edited with Kevin Carey and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010; and Charter Schools: Hope or Hype?, written with Jack Buckley and published by Princeton University Press in 2007. Schneider coauthored Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools, with Paul Teske and Melissa Marschall. Published by Princeton University Press, it won the Policy Study Organization's Aaron Wildavsky Best Book Award. In 2013, the Chronicle of Higher Education selected Schneider as one of the 10 people who had the most impact on higher education policy that year.

Schneider was a visiting scholar between 2008 and 2018 at the American Enterprise Institute and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of political science since 2009 at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He received his bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.