Dear Mr. President
Illuminating the Current Landscape of Education
&
Igniting its Future Trajectory
MAURICE J. ELIAS, Ph.D., is Professor, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, and Co-Developer of the Social Decision Making/Social Problem Solving Project. This project received the 1988 Lela Rowland Prevention Award from the National Mental Health Association, is approved by the Program Effectiveness Panel of the National Diffusion Network as a federally validated prevention program, and, most recently, has been named as a Model Program by the National Educational Goals Panel.
Dr. Elias is also Co-Founder of the Consortium on the School-Based Promotion of Social Competence, a research consortium comprised of nationally prominent scientists. Most recently, Dr. Elias was named to the Leadership Team of the Collaborative for the Advancement of Social and Emotional Learning, and serves as advisor to the Rutgers-based Consortium on Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace, funded by the Fetzer Institute and co-chaired by Dan Goleman. With colleagues at CASEL, Dr. Elias was senior author of Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators, published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and already circulated to over 100,000 educational leaders in the U.S. and internationally.
Dr. Elias serves proudly as a Trustee on the Board of the Association for Children of New Jersey and as an Officer of the Highland Park Conservative Temple and Center, and Chairs the Board of Education of the Leon Goodman Memorial Religious School.
His newest book, Emotionally Intelligent Parenting: How to Raise a Self-Disciplined, Responsible, and Socially Skilled Child, with a foreword written by Daniel Goleman, was published by Harmony/Random House in January 1999 and is now available in paperback. Written with Dr.’s Steven Tobias and Brian Friedlander, the book has eight international editions, including Spanish and Hebrew. He and the authors maintain a web site devoted to parenting at www.EQParenting.com and there is a related site for school matters at www.CASEL.org.
Dr. Elias also maintains a Listserv for parents and educators interested in issues related to children’s social and academic development; to become involved, email to EQ@EQParenting.com.
Other new work includes action research on Jewish Identity Development in Children and Adolescents and the development and evaluation of video, animation, and computer-based instructional strategies for delivering preventive programs to youth, including those at high risk. Dr. Elias is married and the father of two children.
Jenifer Fox is an international award-winning
author and speaker and a recognized leader of the Strengths Movement within our
educational system, for parents and organizations that serve youth.
In her critically acclaimed book, Your Child’s Strengths, Discover Them,
Develop Them, Use Them, with a foreword by Marcus Buckingham, Fox gives
practical advice to parents and teachers. She lays out a plan for parents,
schools and businesses (the end-users of our educational system) to join
together to transform our communities into learning environments where all
children are focused on discovering their strengths and ultimately finding
success.
Widely recognized as the foremost expert on strengths development in educational
settings, Fox is a visionary, a storyteller and a giver of practical advice. Her
expertise in designing curricula (The Affinities Program) and training
programs (StrengthsNow!) gives teachers, employers, coaches, and
counselors a step-by-step process for implementing a strengths focus both within
their organizations, and with the youth they serve.
Jenifer has worked with parents, teachers, and healthcare providers as well as
businesses and corporations to develop strengths-based programming. She also
counsels businesses on ways to deploy philanthropic resources to support
education and, in doing so, to improve their bottom lines.
In addition to speaking to parents and teachers about children, Jenifer is an
innovative CEO with an expertise in turnaround leadership. This expertise allows
her to speak with authority on social entrepreneurship, nonprofit leadership,
strategic philanthropy and the impact educational trends will have on our
society.
In addition to her many speaking engagements, Jenifer Fox has made dozens of
live and taped appearances on television. She has been interviewed on radio and
pod-casts, and featured in magazines and newspapers.
She resides in the New York Metropolitan area.
Dr. Andy Hargreaves specializes in leadership, professional learning communities, and educational change. As the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, he strives to promote social justice and connect theory and practice in education.
He co-founded the International Center for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Until he moved to North America in 1987, Andy taught primary school and lectured in several English universities, including Oxford. Andy has held visiting professorships and fellowships in England, Australia, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Hong Kong and Japan. He is holder of the Canadian Education Association/Whitworth 2000 Award for outstanding contributions to educational research in Canada.
Dr. Hargreaves’s book, Teaching In The Knowledge Society: Education In The Age Of Insecurity, received outstanding writing awards from the American Educational Research Association and the American Libraries Association. Andy was co-author with Dean Fink on the acclaimed book Sustainable Leadership.
Andy was the invited editor of the 1997 ASCD Yearbook, he initiated and coordinated the editing of the International Handbook of Educational Change (Kluwer 1998) and he is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Change (published by Kluwer).
Andy Hargreaves’ work has been translated extensively into more than a dozen languages.
Professor Hargreaves’ current research interests include the emotions of teaching and leading and the sustainability of change and leadership in education, business, sport, and health.
Dr. Gerry House has been President and CEO of the Institute for Student Achievement since April, 2000. Prior to joining ISA, Dr. House spent 15 years as a superintendent for schools in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She also has served as a teacher, junior and senior high school guidance counselor, principal and assistant superintendent.
Dr. House is an active leader in the education community, and serves on many national boards including the Board of Directors of the Educational Testing Service (where she was board chair from 2002-2005); the Advisory Committee of the Harvard Change Leadership Group; the AutoZone Board of Directors; the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Board of Directors; the Schlechty Center Board of Directors; the Adelphi University Board of Directors; and the Alliance for Excellent Education Board of Directors.
Dr. House is a former member of Visiting Committee for the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr. House has received numerous professional accolades throughout her career. She was named National Superintendent of the Year in 1999 by the American Association of School Administrators for her extensive school reform efforts in the Memphis school system. Her additional awards and recognitions include: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Education, Alumni Leadership Award (2000); The Harold J. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education Award (1999); Tennessee Superintendent of the Year (1998); and The Council of the Great City Schools’ Richard R. Green Award (1998). Dr. House was also named twice to the Executive Educator Magazine’s listing of Top 100 Executive Educators in Education.
As the president of Curriculum Designers, Inc., she has served as an education consultant to thousands of schools nationally and internationally. She works with schools and districts, K-12, on issues and practices pertaining to: curriculum reform, instructional strategies to encourage critical thinking, and strategic planning.
Her books, Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation and Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12 have been best sellers. Both books are published by ASCD. Numerous articles have appeared in professional journals. Her new book, Getting Results with Curriculum Mapping, was released by ASCD in November, 2004. Dr. Jacobs' new book, Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Strategies for Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening was released in April 2006 by Eye-on-Education, Inc.
Dr. Jacobs has served as an adjunct associate professor on the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University, NYC, since 1981 and continues to teach there every summer.
Her consultations are wide ranging having worked organizations like: the College Board, NBC Sunday Today Show, Children’s Television Workshop, CBS National Sunrise Semester, ASCD, IBM EduQuest, The Discovery Channel, Tapestry Productions, The Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, New York City Ballet Education Department at Lincoln Center, the Peace Corps., the National School Conference Institute, the Disney Company, Prentice-Hall Publishing, the Near East School Association based in Athens, Greece, International Baccalaureate, the European Council of International Schools, and state education departments.
Interviews and features have appeared in the New York Times, Educational Leadership, Child Magazine, Sunburst Communications video on Successful Middle Schools, and National Public Radio "Talk of the Nation" Broadcast. Dr. Jacobs has published curriculum materials with Prentice Hall, Milton-Bradley, the Electric Company, and Bowmar Publishing.
Video Journal of Education features a series on her work, in addition, two other video series developed by ASCD focus on Dr. Jacobs’ curriculum models. PBS features two of her courses for teachers, Curriculum Mapping by Heidi Hayes Jacobs I & II, in their professional development program, PBS TeacherLine® , delivered on-line.
She is married with two children and lives in Westchester County, New York.
Dr. Jackson founded Mindsteps Inc. in 2006 to help teachers learn how to help every students meet or exceed rigorous learning standards. Her unique approach to professional development shows teachers how to create units that meet the learning needs of every student in the classroom, supporting struggling students without sacrificing rigor. Her work with administrators helps them effectively train and support teachers and create highly rigorous school programs that ensure equitable access to college readiness for all students. She also works with school systems and non-profits to remove institutional barriers to equity, access, and rigor for all students, particularly students of color who are traditionally under-represented in advanced courses.
Dr. Jackson served as a teacher, administrator, adjunct professor, consultant, and speaker championing equity, access, and rigor for over 15 years. As a National Board Certified English teacher, she increased the enrollment of minority and non-traditional students in her AP Language and Composition classes and tripled her course enrollment within one year without a decrease in her students' test scores.
As a middle school administrator in Montgomery County Maryland, she worked to revise the district's Gifted and Talented program to be more inclusive of under-represented students and better prepare students for rigorous high school work. She also compiled the final draft of the district’s Middle School Reform Report and helped lead one of the largest middle schools in the district to win the state and national Blue Ribbon.
Dr. Jackson has worked with
non-profits such as the College Board, The National Governors’ Association, and
the Fulfillment Fund and with school districts in Maryland, Florida, Illinois,
Massachusetts, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, New York, Colorado, Georgia, Ohio,
and the District of Columbia to help develop the capacity of both teachers and
school leaders help all students meet or exceed rigorous learning standards and
become college-ready.
She has also been featured in The Washington Post, a PBS/Annenberg television series, Lifetime Television's daily talk show Lifetime Live, and on WTOP radio.
As an educator, she has served as an adjunct professor at Towson University and Bowie University and presented her own research on equity, access, rigor, and instructional strategies designed to help under-represented and under-served student populations meet rigorous learning standards at several national conferences including the College Board National Forum, The AP Annual Conference, CCCC, AERA, ASCD Annual Conference, The National Middle School Association Annual Conference, The National Staff Development Conference, and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards National Conference. She is also a senior fellow of the Phelps Stokes Fund and the Chairperson of the Dupont Park Adventist Junior Academy School Board.
Dr. Jackson is the author of three books: The Differentiation Workbook: A step-by-step guide to creating lessons that help every student meet the standards; The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Strategic Conversations; and Never Work Harder than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching.
Linda Lantieri, MA is a Fulbright Scholar, keynote speaker, and internationally known expert in social and emotional learning, conflict resolution, intergroup relations, and crisis intervention. Currently she serves as the Director of The Inner Resilience Program, a project of the Tides Center, which is an initiative that equips school personnel with the skills and strategies to strengthen their inner resilience in order to model these skills for the young people in their care. She is also the cofounder of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program (RCCP), which has been implemented at 400 schools in 15 school districts in the United States, with pilot sites in Brazil and Puerto Rico. She is a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress from the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress.
Linda is also one of the founding board members of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) whose central office is at the University of Illinois at Chicago. CASEL’s mission is to establish social and emotional learning as an essential part of education from preschool through high school worldwide.
Linda is the coauthor of Waging Peace in Our Schools (Beacon Press, 1996), editor of Schools with Spirit: Nurturing the Inner Lives of Children and Teachers (Beacon Press, 2001), chapter contributor to Forever After: New York City Teachers on 9/11 (Teacher College Press, 2006), and author of Building Emotional Intelligence (Sounds True, 2008). She was selected as an Educational Innovator by the National Education Association, received the Richard R. Green Distinguished Educator Award and the Spirit of Crazy Horse Award for “creating courage in discouraged youth.”
She also received the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) 2001 Making a Difference Award.
Linda is a Senior Scholar at the Fetzer Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports research and education in the relationship between body, mind, and spirit. She is a Fellow of the George Lucas Educational Foundation and also serves as a Senior Educational Advisor of Operation Respect, which was founded by Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary.
Deborah W. Meier is currently on the faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, as senior scholar and adjunct professor as well as Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools.
Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and headstart teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools.
She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools. During this period she founded a local Coalition center, which networked approximately fifty small Coalition-style K-12 schools in the city.
Between 1992-96 she also served as co-director of a project (Coalition Campus Project) that successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools.
She was an advisor to New York City’s Annenberg Challenge and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 1995-1997.
From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180 children in the Roxbury community.
The schools she has helped create serve predominantly low-income African-American and Latino students, and include a typical range of students in terms of academic skills, special needs, etc. There are no entrance requirements. These schools are considered exemplars of reform nationally and affiliates of the national Coalition of Essential Schools founded by Dr. Ted Sizer and currently led by Lewis Cohen.
A learning theorist, she encourages new approaches that enhance democracy and equity in public education. Meier is on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, The Nation and the Harvard Education Letter. She is a Board member of the Educational Alliance, the Association of Union Democracy, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Panasonic Foundation, and a founding member of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation and the Forum for Democracy and Education, among others.
Her books, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.
Stephanie Pace Marshall is the Founding President and President Emerita of the internationally recognized Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy®. IMSA develops creative, ethical leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As a teaching and learning laboratory created by the State of Illinois, IMSA enrolls academically talented Illinois students (grades 10-12) in its advanced, residential college preparatory program. It also serves thousands of educators and students in Illinois and beyond through innovative instructional programs that foster imagination and inquiry. (www.imsa.edu)
Marshall is internationally recognized as a pioneer and innovative leader and teacher and an inspiring speaker and writer on leadership, learning and schooling, and the design of generative and life-affirming learning organizations. She has published over thirty articles in professional journals and was an author for the Drucker Foundation’s series Organizations of the Future. She served as an editor and chapter author of Scientific Literacy for the 21st Century (2002) and was a contributing advisor to Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U. S. High Schools (published by the National Academy of Science in 2002).
Marshall was the founding president of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools in Mathematics, Science and Technology, and the president of the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), one of the world’s largest international education associations. She was elected a fellow in the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce in London, England and serves on the board of the Queen Noor Foundation in Amman, Jordan, and several other foundation and corporate boards in the United States. In 2007, she became a member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Science and the Public and a charter member of the Advisory Board for AECT’s FutureMinds: Transforming American School Systems.
Marshall has been recognized by the R J R Nabisco Corporation as one of the nation’s most innovative educational leaders and by the National Association of School Boards as one of North America’s 100 Best Educators.
She has received numerous awards and recognitions for her leadership, including the Distinguished Service Award from the U. S. Marine Corp, the Woman Extraordinaire Award by the International Women’s Association, and the Distinguished Citizen of the Year Award from the Boy Scouts of America. She earned her Ph.D. from Loyola University of Chicago and has received four honorary doctorates in science and in arts and letters. In 2007, she received the Pioneer Award from the Board of Trustees of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy.
As a result of her achievements, in 2005 she was inducted into the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and was designated a Laureate of the Academy, the state’s highest award for achievement that “contributes to the betterment of mankind.” At the invitation of President William Jefferson Clinton, Dr. Marshall became a member in 2007 of the Clinton Global Initiative, a non-partisan cadre of "the world's most influential leaders committed to strengthening the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.” Her book, The Power to Transform: Leadership That Brings Learning and Schooling to Life, received the 2007 Educator’s Award from the Delta Kappa Gamma Society international.
She has two stepchildren and five grandchildren and lives in Wheaton, Illinois with her husband Robert and as often as they can, they travel to their home, Kaleidoscope Mountain, in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Carol Ann Tomlinson’s career as an educator includes 21 years as a public school teacher, including 12 years as a program administrator of special services for struggling and advanced learners. She was Virginia’s Teacher of the Year in 1974. More recently, she has been a faculty member at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, where she is currently William Clay Parrish, Jr. Professor in Education and Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundations and Policy.
Also at U.VA., she is Co-Director of the University's Institutes on Academic Diversity. Carol was named Outstanding Professor at Curry School of Education in 2004 and received an All University Teaching Award in 2008. Special interests throughout her career have included curriculum and instruction for struggling learners and advanced learners, effective instruction in heterogeneous settings, and encouraging creative and critical thinking in the classroom.
Carol is a reviewer for eight journals and is author of over 200 articles, book chapters, books, and other professional development materials.
For ASCD, she has authored How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed Ability Classrooms, The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, Leadership for Differentiated Schools and Classrooms, the facilitator’s guide for the video staff development sets called Differentiating Instruction, and At Work in the Differentiated Classroom, as well as a professional inquiry kit on differentiation. Most recently, she co-authored a book with Jay McTighe titled Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids and with Kay Brimijoin and Lane Narvaez co-authored The Differentiated School: Making Revolutionary Change or Teaching and Learning. For Corwin Press, she is co-author of The Parallel Curriculum Model: A Design to Develop High Potential and Challenge High Ability Learners. Carol’s books on differentiation have been translated into eleven languages. She works throughout the U.S. and abroad with teachers whose goal is to develop more responsive heterogeneous classrooms.
Grant Wiggins is the President of Authentic Education in Hopewell, New Jersey. He earned his Ed.D. from Harvard University and his B. A. from St. John's College in Annapolis. Grant consults with schools, districts and state education departments on a variety of reform matters; organizes conferences and workshops; and develops print materials and Web resources on curricular change. He is perhaps best known for being the co-author, with Jay McTighe, of Understanding By Design and The Understanding By Design Handbook, the award-winning and highly successful materials on curriculum published by ASCD.
His work has been supported by the Pew
Charitable Trusts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the National Science
Foundation.
Over the past twenty years, Grant has worked on some of the most influential reform initiatives in the country, including Vermont's portfolio system and Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools. He has established statewide Consortia devoted to assessment reform for the states of North Carolina and New Jersey. Grant is the author of Educative Assessment and Assessing Student Performance, both published by Jossey-Bass. His many articles have appeared in such journals as Educational Leadership and Phi Delta Kappan.
His work is grounded in 14 years of secondary school teaching and coaching. Grant taught English and electives in philosophy, coached Varsity soccer, Cross Country, JV Baseball, and Track & Field. Grant has more recently coached his two sons in soccer and baseball. He also plays guitar and sings in the Hazbins, a rock band.
Judy Willis, MD, M.Ed: After graduating Phi Beta
Kappa as the first woman graduate from Williams College, Judy Willis attended
UCLA School of Medicine where she was awarded her medical degree. She remained
at UCLA and completed a medical residency and neurology residency, including
chief residency. She practiced neurology for fifteen years before returning to
university to obtain her Teaching Credential and Masters of Education from the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She has taught in elementary, middle,
and graduate schools and currently teaches at Santa Barbara Middle School.
Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development (ASCD) publishes her book for education professionals,
Research-Based Strategies To Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a
Neurologist/Classroom Teacher (2006), Brain-Friendly Strategies for the
Inclusion Classroom (2007), and Teaching the Brain to Read: Strategies
for Improving Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension (2008) ASCD. She is
completing a fourth ASCD book about research-based strategies for math
instruction.
Her first book for parents and caregivers,
How Your Child Learns Best: A parent guide to raising smarter children by a
neurologist and classroom teacher (2008), was published by Sourcebooks and
Inspiring Middle School Minds, published this year by Great Potentials
Press. Dr. Willis is an international consultant for professional and curriculum
development, with an on-going three-year project for ASCD International
Professional Development Program in the United Arab Emirates where her book is
translated into Arabic. She is presenter at educational conferences nationally
and internationally in the field of learning-centered brain research and
classroom strategies derived from this research. She was a Distinguished
Lecturer at the ASCD national conference in March 2008 and will be so again
March 2009 co-presenting with Goldie Hawn, founder of the Hawn Foundation for
Mindfulness Education on which Dr. Willis serves on the Board of Directors. Dr.
Willis writes extensively for professional educational journals and was honored
as a 2007 Finalist for Distinguished Achievement Award for her
educational writing by the Association for Educational Publishers.
Pat Wolfe is an independent consultant who speaks to educators and parents in schools across the United States and in international schools. Her professional background includes work as a public school teacher at all levels; staff development trainer for the Upland (California) School District; Director of Instruction for the Napa County Office of Education, Napa, California; and lead trainer for the International Principal Training Center in Rome and London. Her staff development experience includes conducting workshops for educators in Madeline Hunter's Elements of Effective Teaching and Clinical Supervision, Anthony Gregorc's Mind Styles, Carolyn Evertson's Classroom Management and Organization, and Peer Coaching. She has been featured in a number of ASCD and National Staff Development Council (NSDC) videotape productions and satellite broadcasts.
Her major area of expertise is the application of brain research to educational practice. She is the author of the award-winning book Brain Matters: Translating Research to Classroom Practice and co-author of Building the Reading Brain. Dr. Wolfe is a native of Missouri. She completed her undergraduate work in Oklahoma and her postgraduate studies in California. She presently resides in Napa, California.