He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning a BA in 1965 and a PhD in 1968.
He married Veronica G. Waks in 1997; she is a naturopathic physician; they have one son.
Waks has published extensively in the field of Philosophy of Education.
Waks was co-founder and program chair of the National Technological Literacy Conferences (awarded first prize for creative programming in 1985 by the University Council on Educational Administration), and was conference director of the 2016 conference on democratic education in celebration of the centennial of the publication of John Dewey's Democracy and Education in Washington D. C. He is the founding editor of Dewey Studies.
[1] Waks directed the Center for East-West Studies in Education at Hangzhou Normal University in China (2018–21).