Speaker Biographies
Michael Casserly has served as executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools since January 1992. Mr. Casserly also served as the organization’s director of legislation and research for fifteen years before assuming his current position. As head of the urban school group, he has unified big-city school districts nationwide around a vision of reform and improvement; launched an aggressive research program on trends in urban education; convened the first Education Summit of Big City Mayors and Superintendents; led the nation’s largest urban school districts to volunteer for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); led the first national study of common practices among the nation’s fastest improving urban school districts; and launched national task forces on achievement gaps, leadership and governance, finance, professional development, and bilingual education. Mr. Casserly is currently spearheading efforts to boost academic performance in the nation’s big city schools, strengthen management and operations, challenge inequitable state financing systems, and improve the public image of urban education.
Jack D. Dale joined Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools (FCPS), the nation’s twelfth-largest school system, as superintendent in July 2004. From 1996 to 2004, he served as superintendent of Frederick County (Maryland) Public Schools, where he was named Maryland’s superintendent of the year. Mr. Dale has served in education as a teacher of mathematics, assistant principal, director of instruction, director of personnel, and associate superintendent for school administration. One of his major initiatives in Fairfax County is Teacher Leadership, which provides extended-year teacher contracts designed to improve instruction and thereby raise student achievement. The Teacher Leadership initiative also provides FCPS leadership the opportunity to cultivate talent within the division and to ensure that effective programs and practices are implemented.
Chester E. Finn Jr. is a scholar, educator, and public servant who has been at the forefront of the national education debate for thirty-five years. He has served as a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, counsel to the U.S. ambassador to India, legislative director for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), and assistant secretary of education for research and improvement. A senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, Mr. Finn is also president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. He serves on the board of several other organizations concerned with primary and secondary schooling. The author or coauthor of sixteen books and more than four hundred articles, Mr. Finn’s work has appeared in such publications as The Weekly Standard, the Christian Science Monitor, Commentary magazine, The Public Interest, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Education Week, Harvard Business Review, and the Boston Globe. He has received awards from the Educational Press Association of America, Choice magazine, the Education Writers Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge.
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI. His many books include No Remedy Left Behind (coedited with Chester E. Finn Jr.; AEI Press, 2007), Footing the Tuition Bill (AEI Press, 2007), No Child Left Behind: A Primer (Peter Lang 2006), Educational Entrepreneurship (Harvard Education Press, 2006), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Revolution at the Margins (Brookings Institution, 2002), and Spinning Wheels (Brookings Institution, 1999). His work has appeared in outlets that include Harvard Educational Review, Urban Affairs Review, Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Education Week, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Next, Educational Leadership, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and National Review. Mr. Hess currently serves on the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education and as a member of the research advisory board for the National Center on Educational Accountability. He is a former high school social studies teacher and former professor of education and government at the University of Virginia.
Dianne M. Piché is the executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights. A civil rights lawyer, writer, and advocate, she specializes in legislation and litigation to promote educational equity. Prior to assuming her current position, Ms. Piché directed the commission’s Title I Monitoring Project, which examined the impact of education reforms on disadvantaged children and documented widespread violations of federal requirements to protect poor and minority students. As a litigator, she has represented plaintiff school children in desegregation cases in St. Louis, Missouri; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and elsewhere. Ms. Piché has written and lectured on subjects that include education reform, school finance, affirmative action, and school desegregation, and she has taught a graduate course in education law at the University of Maryland. She has been an adviser to several congressional committees, including the House Committee on Education and Labor and the then–Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, and to education and advocacy groups, including the Title I Reform Network. Ms. Piché has also served as Maryland’s state director for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.
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