A Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom: Appraising Old Answers and New Ideas

October 23-24, 2003

Speaker Biographies

Vicki Bernstein is the Director of Alternative Certification for the New York City Department of Education. In that capacity, she designed and initiated the innovative NYC Teaching Fellows Program, the largest alternative certification program in the country. Since its inception in 2000, 5,700 Fellows have started teaching in over 700 New York City public schools. At the Department of Education, Ms. Bernstein formerly served as the chief of staff to the Deputy Chancellor for Operations. In that role, she coordinated the activities of divisions and offices under the jurisdiction of the Deputy Chancellor including facilities, budget, financial operations, human resources, information technology, audit and school safety.

Alan Bersin

became Superintendent of Public Education in San Diego on July 1, 1998, and launched a major reorganization of the district to focus its resources strategically on instruction. Prior to becoming the leader of the nation’s eighth largest urban school district, he served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of California for nearly five years and as the Attorney General’s Southwest Border Representative responsible for coordinating federal law enforcement on the border from South Texas to southern California. From 1969 to 1971, Mr. Bersin attended Balliol College at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

J.B. Buxton

serves as the Senior Education Advisor to Governor Michael Easley. In that position he advises the Governor on education issues related to pre-K-12 public schools. Before joining Governor Easley’s staff, J.B. served as the legislative director for the North Carolina State Board of Education. He has also worked as an education policy advisor in the White House under President Clinton, and with the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program. He began his career as a high school English teacher and coach. J.B. chairs the board of the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs and serves as a board member for the Education Commission of the States, Teach for America North Carolina, and the Southeastern Center for Teaching Quality.

James C. Carper

is Professor of Foundations of Education and Coordinator of Programs in Educational Psychology, Research, and Foundations of Education at the University of South Carolina, where he has been a faculty member since 1989. His research interests include history of education in the United States, education and religion, and private schools. His work has been published in History of Education Quarterly, Educational Forum, Journal of Church and State, Educational Policy, Peabody Journal of Education, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, and Kappa Delti Pi Record.

Ronald F. Ferguson

is a senior research associate at the Wiener Center for Social Policy and a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His research for the past few years has focused on racial achievement gaps, and his work has appeared in the publications of the National Research Council, the Brookings Institution, The U.S. Department of Education, and the Educational Research Service. He is co-editor of Urban Problems and Community Development, published by Brookings, and is author of a number of papers on public schooling and education policy.

James W. Fraser

is Professor of History and Education and founding Dean of
the School of Education at Northeastern University where he has been for the last ten years. Prior to that he was on the faculty of Lesley University, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and Boston University, as well as Public School 76 in Manhattan. He is the author of numerous books in education including most recently A History of Hope: When Americans Have Dared to Dream of a Better Future (2002) and BetweenChurch and State: Religion & Public Education in a Multicultural America
(1999). He has served on a number of city and state advisory groups focused on school reform, school desegregation, and the redevelopment of teacher preparation.

Dan Goldhaber

is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs and an Affiliated Scholar of the Urban Institute’s Education Policy Center, focusing on issues of educational productivity and reform at the K-12 level and the relationship between teacher labor markets and teacher quality. Dr. Goldhaber's current work is looking specifically at: the implementation, and impact, of various comprehensive school reform models; teacher labor markets and the role that teacher pay structure plays in teacher recruitment and retention; and the effects of National Board Certification.

Bryan C. Hassel

is the president of Public Impact and a leading national expert on charter schools and charter school authorizers. He writes and consults widely on U.S. education policy. His works include Better Pay for Better Teaching, a policy brief on teacher compensation for the Progressive Policy Institute, and The Charter School Challenge, a 1999 Brookings publication.

Kati Haycock

is one of the nation's leading child advocates in the field of Education. She currently serves as Director of The Education Trust. Established in 1990, the Trust seeks to speak up for what's right for young people, especially those who are poor or members of minority groups. The Trust also provides hands-on assistance to urban school districts and universities that want to work together to improve student achievement, kindergarten through college.

Frederick M. Hess

is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Executive Editor of Education Next. Prior to joining AEI, he was high school social studies teacher and a professor of education and politics at the University of Virginia. Mr. Hess’s books include Revolution at the Margins, Spinning Wheels, Bringing the Social Sciences Alive, and the forthcoming Common Sense School Reform. His work has appeared in journals including Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Teachers College Record, and Urban Affairs Review.

David L. Leal

is an Assistant Professor of Government at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include Latino politics and education policy. He has published articles in journals such as British Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Educational Policy, American Politics Quarterly, Political Behavior, Armed Forces & Society, Social Science Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, Urban Affairs Review, and Urban Education. Dr. Leal is currently a Spencer/National Academy of Education Post-Doctoral Fellow.

Tom Loveless

is Senior Fellow and Director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Loveless's research focuses on the politics and policies of educational reform. Loveless has taught as a sixth grade teacher in California and as an Assistant and Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of The Tracking Wars: State Reform Meets School Policy (1999), editor of Conflicting Missions?: Teachers Unions and Educational Reform (2000) and The Great Curriculum Debate: How Should We Teach Reading and Math? (2001), and co-editor of Bridging the Achievement Gap (2002). Mr. Loveless annually authors The Brown Center Report on American Education.

William Moloney

is Colorado Commissioner of Education and Secretary for the Colorado State Board of Education. He has served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, headmaster, assistant superintendent and superintendent in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. His career also includes several years overseas, four of them as Director of the American School in London. He is co-author of The Content of America’s Character and Education Innovation: An Agenda to Frame the Future and also served three terms on the National Assessment Governing Board.

Michael Podgursky

is Middlebush Professor of Economics and Department Chair, University of Missouri - Columbia. He has been Department Chair since 1995. Prior to that he was on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1980-1995). He has published numerous articles and reports on education policy and teacher quality, and co-authored a book, Teacher Pay and Teacher Quality. He is a member of the advisory boards of the National Center for Teacher Quality and American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence.

Heidi Ramirez

worked for the US Department of Education under the Clinton Administration where she served as a policy advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Education on issues of technology integration, the education of poor and minority students (primarily through Title I and Title VII), and teacher quality. As such, Ramirez was part of the team responsible for the development of the Administration's proposal to reauthorize ESEA, as well the Department's final reporting higher education guidelines on teacher quality. She currently works as a consultant to the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation in education planning and investing.

Andrew Rotherham

is Director of the 21st Century School's Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. The project works on a variety of education issues to ensure that America's public schools are an engine of equal opportunity in the knowledge economy. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy at the White House during the Clinton Administration. Mr. Rotherham is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia.

David Shreve

is the Senior Committee Director of the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Education Committee, a post he has filled since 1997. This policy committee establishes NCSL’s positions on federal legislation. He has been with NCSL since 1987, initially performing research on employment and training issues and then directing NCSL’s Japan Legislative Exchange Program. Before joining NCSL, he worked as a carpenter and cabinetmaker, as a construction trades teacher in a residential treatment facility, and as a national manager of construction trades training for the National Association of Home Builders.

David Steiner

is Chairman of the Department of Education Policy at the School of Education at Boston University and also holds an appointment in the Curriculum and Teaching Department in that School. He studies and teaches the philosophy of education and American education policy. In addition to articles and book chapters in these fields, Dr. Steiner is the author or Education Achievement and Reform Strategies in the United States of America (2001) and Rethinking Democratic Education (1994), Serving as an Education Commissioner for the London-based Politeia Think tank, and as a consultant to IREX, he has worked on issues of democracy and education on both sides of the Atlantic.

Gary Sykes

is a professor in the departments of Teacher Education and Educational Administration, Michigan State University. He specializes in policy analysis related to issues of teacher education and teacher quality, school choice, and related issues. His latest publication, with David Plank, is Choosing Choice: School Choice in International Perspective (New York: Teachers College Press, 2003).

Kate Walsh

is currently the Executive Director for the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). Prior to NCTQ, Walsh worked extensively on education reform in both the public and private sectors, including the Core Knowledge Foundation, The Abell Foundation, the Baltimore City Public Schools and as founder and director of The Baraka School, an internationally recognized boarding school in Kenya established to educate at-risk boys from Baltimore. Teacher quality has been at the center of Walsh’s work from both an academic perspective and in practice, including implementation of the first alternative certification program in Maryland. Her most widely publicized report Teacher Certification Reconsidered: Stumbling for Quality (www.abell.org) revealed the many problems with research used to support the value of the teacher preparation and licensure.

Jim Wyckoff

is Professor of Public Administration, Public Policy and Economics, at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Currently, he is working with a research team to examine the effect of teacher preparation on student outcomes with support from the Spencer Foundation, the City University of New York and the Carnegie Corporation. Wyckoff is an associate editor of the Economics of Education Review and President of the American Education Finance Association.

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