Larry Berger is CEO and cofounder of Wireless Generation, a company that helps PreK–12 educators to teach smarter through the sensitive and innovative application of technology in the classroom. Under his leadership, the company has developed handheld computer software that makes formative assessment instructionally useful to teachers, next generation curriculum customized throughout the school year to students' needs, and large-scale data systems that centralize student information and integrate knowledge management tools to spur teacher collaborations. Mr. Berger was a Rhodes Scholar and a White House Fellow working on educational technology at NASA. He serves on the Carnegie Institute for Advanced Study Joint Commission on Mathematics and Science Education and on the board of trustees for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is a member of the board of overseers for the Annenberg Institute on School Reform at Brown University.

Dominic J. Brewer is a labor economist specializing in the economics of education and education policy at the University of Southern California. Before joining USC in 2005, he was a vice president at RAND Corporation, directing RAND's education policy research program. He has published more than fifty academic journal articles, book chapters, and monographs, including In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education (Transaction, 2001), coauthored with Susan M. Gates and Charles A. Goldman. He has been an adjunct professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles and a professor of policy at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He was an associate editor of economics for Education Review for many years and holds courtesy appointments in the USC College Department of Economics and in the School of Policy Planning and Development.

Jack Buckley is an associate professor of applied statistics, applied psychology (by courtesy), and public policy (by courtesy) at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Mr. Buckley joined the faculty at New York University in 2008 after serving for two years as deputy commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education. He also holds an appointment as an affiliated research professor with the National Center for the Study of Privatization of Education at Columbia University's Teachers College. His latest book is Charter Schools: Hope or Hype (with Mark Schneider; Princeton University Press, 2007). Prior to his graduate study, he served in the Navy as a surface warfare officer and nuclear reactor engineer.

Mary Cullinane is the director of innovation and business development for Microsoft Education Group. Ms. Cullinane joined Microsoft in October 2000, where she has served as national program manager of the Anytime Anywhere Learning; creator of the Microsoft Innovation Center Awards; and national manager of Microsoft's K–12 marketing, programs and strategic investments. From 2006 to 2008, she was the director of the U.S. Partners in Learning Program. In 2003, Ms. Cullinane became technology architect at West Philadelphia's School of the Future, a partnership between the Microsoft Corporation and Philadelphia Public Schools. A recipient of the Microsoft Circle of Excellence Award, Ms. Cullinane has spoken at national and international conferences on the topics of educational technology, school reform, and strategic leadership. She has testified before Congress and has appeared on PBS, NPR, and ABC News and in Wired magazine.

Thomas S. Dee is a professor of economics at Swarthmore College. He is currently a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, concentrating on programs for children, the economics of education, and health economics. Mr. Dee was a visiting fellow at Princeton University in 2003, and until 2005 he was a scholar at the National Young Faculty Leaders Forum at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the American Educational Research Association, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the National Tax Association, and the Southern Economic Association.

Michael Feinberg is cofounder of the Knowledge Is Power Program Foundation (KIPP) and superintendent of KIPP, Inc. As a Teach For American alumnus, he began KIPP in 1994 with Dave Levin and established KIPP Academy Houston a year later. He has received numerous awards, including Houston's Jefferson Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Seed of Freedom Award, and the Heritage Foundation's Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship. KIPP has been featured in numerous media publications and is now a network of nearly forty high-performing public schools, serving over 6,000 students in fifteen states and the District of Columbia.

Jennifer de Forest is the upper school director of the Calhoun School in New York City. She is a former high school history teacher, Fulbright-Hays recipient, Klingenstein Fellow, and World Affairs Council Scholar and has served as chair of the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review. Formerly an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, Ms. de Forest returned to schools in 2008 and served as dean of studies at San Francisco's Lick-Wilmerding High School until 2009. Ms. de Forest has published on the history of education reform, juvenile justice, and foundation philanthropy in such journals as the Teachers College Record, the History of Education Quarterly, Perspectives on the History of Higher Education, and The Urban Review.  

Dan Goldhaber is a professor of public affairs at the University of Washington, an affiliated scholar at the Urban Institute, and a senior nonresident fellow at Education Sector. He served as an elected member of the Alexandria City School Board from 1997-2002. His work focuses on issues of educational productivity and K–12 reform and the relationship between teacher labor markets and teacher quality. Mr. Goldhaber's current research addresses teacher labor markets and the role that teacher pay structure plays in teacher recruitment and retention; the relationship between teacher licensure test performance and student achievement; the stability of teacher effectiveness measures over time; the influence of human resource practices on teacher turnover and quality; and the role of community colleges in higher education.

Jay P. Greene is an endowed chair and head of the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas. He is the author of Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools—And Why It Isn't So (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and his research was cited four times in the Supreme Court's opinions in the landmark Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case on school vouchers. His articles have appeared in policy journals such as The Public Interest, City Journal, and Education Next; in academic journals such as The Georgetown Public Policy Review, Education and Urban Society, and The British Journal of Political Science; and in major newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Mr. Greene has previously been a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Houston, as well as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Douglas N. Harris is an economist and associate professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Mr. Harris recently chaired the National Conference on Value-Added, with events in Madison and Washington, D.C. He also advises members of Congress, governors, and other policymakers. His research interests include teacher labor markets, accountability, school finance, and the relationship between education and economic competitiveness. His research is frequently cited in current policy debates, and he consults widely on policy matters with organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, RAND, the U.S. Department of Education, and state education agencies. Previously, he was a school board member of the Florida State University School, a K-12 charter school in Tallahassee.

Monica Higgins is an associate professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, prior to which she spent eleven years as a member of the faculty at Harvard Business School in the organizational behavior unit. Her recent book, Career Imprints: Creating Leaders Across an Industry (Jossey-Bass, 2005) focuses on the leadership development of executives in the biotechnology industry. In education, her research interests straddle higher education and urban public schools. Ms. Higgins is studying the effectiveness of senior leadership teams in large urban school districts across the United States. While at Harvard, her teaching has focused on the areas of leadership and organizational behavior, self-assessment and career development, entrepreneurship, and strategic human resources management. Ms. Higgins has also taught in leadership programs for the Broad Foundation and New Leaders for New Schools.

Brian A. Jacob is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of Education Policy and a professor of economics at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an executive committee member of the National Poverty Center. He has previously served as a policy analyst in the New York City mayor's office and taught middle school in East Harlem. Mr. Jacob's primary fields of interest are labor economics, program evaluation, and the economics of education. His current research focuses on urban school reform and teacher labor markets.

Thomas Kane is a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Project for Policy Innovation in Education, a program that partners with states and districts to evaluate innovative policies. His work has influenced thought on education policies like test score volatility, school accountability system design, teacher recruitment and retention, race-conscious college admissions, and the economic payoff of community colleges. From 1995-1996, he served as the senior staff economist for labor, education, and welfare policy issues within the Clinton administration's Council of Economic Advisers. From 1991-2000, Mr. Kane was a faculty member at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He has also been a professor of public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles and has held visiting fellowships at the Brookings Institution and the Hoover Institution. 

Susanna Loeb is an associate professor of education at Stanford University, specializing in the economics of education and the relationship between schools and federal, state, and local policies. She studies resource allocation, looking specifically at how teachers' preferences and teacher preparation policies affect the distribution of teaching quality and how the structure of state finance systems affects funds to districts. She also studies poverty policies, including welfare reform and early-childhood education programs. Ms. Loeb is an associate professor of business (by courtesy) at Stanford and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bridget Terry Long is an associate professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her work has focused on college access and choice, factors that influence college student outcomes, and the behavior of postsecondary institutions. Her past projects have examined the effects of financial aid programs, the impact of postsecondary remediation, and the influence of class size and faculty characteristics on student persistence. Her current projects include an aid simplification study, analysis of the growing gender gap in college enrollment, and an examination of the expansion of student loans. She is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and was a visiting scholar with the New England Public Policy Center at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank. 

Doug Lynch is the vice dean at the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an academic director in the Wharton School's executive education program. Prior to joining Penn, Mr. Lynch was assistant dean for corporate learning, new business development, and international initiatives at New York University. He previously worked at the College Board and at Arizona State University. Mr. Lynch's educational programs have won several national awards, including the president's award for exporting, the first time a college was recognized for commercial innovation by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Mr. Lynch has sat on presidential, congressional, and state advisory boards both in New York and Arizona and currently is on the board of visitors of the CIA. He is the chair of the public policy council for the American Society of Training and Development and is on the advisory board of Harvard University's "Forgotten Half" project.

Patrick McGuinn is associate professor of political science at Drew University. He has previously held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He was a visiting scholar in the Education and Politics program at Teachers College, Columbia University. His first book, No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy, 1965-2005 (Kansas, 2006), was honored as a Choice outstanding academic title. His work has been published in Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Policy History, The Public Interest, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, and Governance.

Rob Reich is an associate professor of political science, ethics in society, and education at Stanford University. His current projects include one about ethics, public policy, and philanthropy and a second about the ideas of equality and adequacy as applied to education policy and reform. He is the author of Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago, 2002), coauthor of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings, 2005), and coeditor of the forthcoming Toward a Humanist Justice: The Political Philosophy of Susan Moller Okin. Mr. Reich was a recipient of the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and is the founder and codirector of the Stanford Summer Philosophy Discovery Institute. 

Michelle A. Rhee is the chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools. Previously, she served as president and CEO of The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit organization that works with school districts, state departments of education, and other educational entities to improve their ability to recruit, select, train, and support new teachers for difficult-to-staff schools. In 1992, Ms. Rhee began her career at Harlem Park Community School as a member of Teach For America. Her success in the classroom earned her acclaim on Good Morning America and The Home Show, as well as in the Wall Street Journal and the Hartford Courant.

Jonah Rockoff is an assistant professor of economics and finance at the Columbia Graduate School of Business and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mr. Rockoff's interests center on local public finance and the economics of education. He has researched the determinants of property taxation and expenditure in local public school districts, the relation between crime risk and local property values, the impact of teachers and teacher certification on student achievement, and measuring the educational quality of charter schools. His current work focuses on identifying pre-employment indicators of effective teachers and how teacher induction programs and mentoring can improve outcomes for new teachers.

Stefanie Sanford is the deputy director of U.S. Program Policy and Finance for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Before joining the foundation, she was deputy director of policy for Texas governor Rick Perry, managing the policy development process and advising on legislation related to educational technology, e-government, higher education, workforce development, and biotechnology. She has served as policy adviser to the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and to the state attorney general. Ms. Sanford was also a White House fellow in the Office of Cabinet Affairs.

Jon Schnur is CEO of New Leaders for New Schools, which he cofounded in 2000. He was previously a policy adviser on K–12 education in the Clinton administration, served as the White House associate director for educational policy, former vice president Gore's senior policy adviser on education, and special assistant to former U.S. secretary of education Richard Riley.

Kim Smith is cofounder and senior adviser of NewSchools Venture Fund, which she established in 1998 to transform public education by supporting education entrepreneurs. She began her career as a consultant specializing in business-education partnerships. In 1989, she became a founding team member of Teach For America. Ms. Smith then served as founding director of BAYAC AmeriCorps, a consortium of nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area working to develop young leaders in education. She has worked in marketing for Silicon Graphics' Education Industry Group, where she focused on the online learning industry, and as the founding director of a trade show venture. 

Christopher B. Swanson is the director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, the nonprofit organization that publishes Education Week. Prior to joining EPE, he was a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, where his work focused on issues of federal policy and urban high school reform. He has examined accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act and served on multiple advisory panels, including the National Governors Association, the Council of the Chief State School Officers, and the Alliance for Excellent Education. He has also contributed chapters to Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis (Harvard Education, 2004), No Child Left Behind and the Reduction of the Achievement Gap (Routledge, 2007), and Reflections on the Social Organization of Schooling: A Tribute to Charles E. Bidwell (Russell Sage Foundation, forthcoming).

Rajiv Vinnakota is cofounder and managing director of the SEED Foundation, which opened the nation's first urban boarding school for disadvantaged students. Prior to founding SEED, he was an associate at Mercer Management Consulting, where he worked on strategic and financial projects in a variety of industries. He is also an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka Fellow, and a trustee at Princeton University. Mr. Vinnakota serves on the board of The Empower Program, which works with youth to end the culture of violence. He was named Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine and has received the Oprah Winfrey Show's Use Your Life Award, among other honors. 

Martin West is an assistant professor in education, political science, and public policy at Brown University and the research editor of Education Next. He previously was a research fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a doctoral fellow in the Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Mr. West is coeditor of No Child Left Behind? The Politics and Practice of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003) and School Money Trials: The Legal Pursuit of Educational Adequacy (Brookings, 2007). He has written numerous articles and papers on education policy and politics. 

Patrick J. Wolf holds the endowed chair in school choice at the University of Arkansas. He is the principal investigator of the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program impact evaluation and the School Choice Demonstration Project. He is editor of Educating Citizens: International Perspective on Civic Values and School Choice (Brookings, 2004) and a contributing author to The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools (Brookings, 2002). He has authored or coauthored more than two dozen articles and book chapters on school choice, special education, public management, and campaign finance. He was a member of the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education and previously taught at Columbia University and Georgetown University.