Speaker biographies
Alice Johnson Cain is senior education aide to Congressman George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. In addition to advising Rep. Miller, she serves as education advisor to the committee’s other Democratic members and their staffs. Ms. Johnson has more than fifteen years of experience in education policy, including five years directing the National Institute for Literacy’s policy office and one year on Vice President Al Gore’s commission to improve workforce skills. She spent two years managing the Children’s Defense Fund’s national grassroots network and several years as an education legislative assistant for Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.) on the Senate HELP Committee. For several years she has taught GED classes to high school dropouts and recent immigrants at a local adult literacy program.
Kati Haycock is director of the Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for the high academic achievement of all students, especially poor and minority students. Before joining to the Education Trust, she served as executive vice president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the nation’s largest child advocacy organization. Ms. Haycock was founder and president of the Achievement Council, a statewide organization that provides assistance to teachers and principals in predominantly minority schools. Before that, she served as director of the outreach and student affirmative action programs for the nine-campus University of California system.
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI, and executive editor of Education Next. His many books include Tough Love for Schools (AEI Press 2006), Urban School Reform (Harvard Education Press 2005), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan 2004), and Spinning Wheels (Brookings 1999). His work has appeared in a variety of scholarly and popular outlets, including Teachers College Record, Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Education Week, Phi Delta Kappan, the Washington Post, and the Washington Times. He serves on a variety of advisory boards, including the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education. Before joining AEI, he was a professor of education and government at the University of Virginia and taught high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Eugene W. Hickok is senior policy director at Dutko Worldwide, a government relations and public policy firm. He previously served as deputy secretary and under secretary at the U.S. Department of Education under President George W. Bush. While at the Department, he was responsible for much of the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act and oversaw the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. For six years he served as Pennsylvania’s secretary of education. Mr. Hickok was on the faculty of Dickinson College and the Dickinson School of Law for many years, and he has published numerous articles and books on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the role of the judiciary in American society, and American politics and law.
Joel Packer is manager of Elementary and Secondary Education Act policy for the National Education Association (NEA). In this role, he develops and implements strategies to improve upon and increase funding for the No Child Left Behind Act and assists NEA affiliates with its implementation. Previously he oversaw class-size reduction, school modernization, higher education, school prayer, environmental hazards in schools, health care, pension, and regulatory reform policy for the NEA. Mr. Packer has also served as president of the Committee for Education Funding and co-chair of the National Strategy Committee of Citizens for Sensible Safeguards. Before joining the NEA in 1983, he was assistant director of government relations with the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and legislative director of the United States Student Association.
Michael J. Petrilli is vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based school reform organization. Before joining the Fordham Foundation in 2005, he was associate assistant deputy secretary of the Office of Innovation and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education, where he helped coordinate No Child Left Behind’s public school choice and supplemental services provisions, and oversaw discretionary grant programs for charter schools, alternative teacher certification, and high school reform. He recently coauthored No Child Left Behind: A Primer (Peter Lang, 2006) with Frederick M. Hess, and has written articles that have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Education Next, Education Week, The Public Interest, and other venues.
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