Speaker Biographies

Gail Burrill earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Marquette University and her masters in mathematics at Loyola University of Chicago. She was a secondary teacher and department chair in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for more than twenty-five years and spent time as an associate researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is a past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, was the director of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, and is now on the faculty at Michigan State University. Her honors include the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics and the Wisconsin Distinguished Educator Award. She was elected to be a fellow of the American Statistical Association and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She was on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, is currently a member of the advisory board of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and is a director of the senior high school component of the Park City Mathematics Institute. The author of numerous books and articles on statistics and mathematics education, she has spoken nationally and internationally on issues in teaching and learning mathematics.

Lynne V. Cheney is a senior fellow at AEI, where she focuses on education standards and policy. Before joining the Institute, Mrs. Cheney served as the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993. She served as a member of Texas governor George W. Bush’s education team and was part of an advisory group that revised Texas standards for the study of history. In the mid-1990s Mrs. Cheney chaired the Committee to Review National Standards, a group of nationally recognized scholars and educators that assessed voluntary national educational standards. A novelist and widely published author, she has written on education and culture for the New York Times, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Mrs. Cheney is the author of Telling the Truth (Simon & Shuster, 1995), a book on the impact of cultural trends on society, and coauthor with her husband of Kings of the Hill (Touchstone, second edition, 1996), a profile of nine of the most powerful leaders of the House of Representatives. She is currently completing America: A Patriotic Primer, an alphabet book intended for elementary school children and their families, to be published in May 2002.  From 1996 to 1998, she was a cohost of Crossfire Sunday. Mrs. Cheney holds a Ph.D. with a specialization in nineteenth-century British literature from the University of Wisconsin.

David Klein is a professor of mathematics at California State University, Northridge, where he has taught courses ranging from precalculus to the graduate level, including teacher education courses. He has held teaching and research positions at Louisiana State University, the University of California at Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California and was a guest scholar at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. He has published research papers in mathematical physics and probability theory as well as articles about K–12 education. Mr. Klein has testified about mathematics education in forums ranging from local school boards to a subcommittee of the House of Representatives. He has served on official panels to review K–8 mathematics curriculum submissions for statewide adoption in California. In 1999 he was appointed by the California State Board of Education to review and evaluate professional development proposals for California mathematics teachers. From 1999 to 2000, he served as a mathematics content director for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, where he directed and assisted eight math specialists. He received a B.A. in mathematics and a B.S. in physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara, as well as a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Cornell University.

Tom Loveless is the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy and a senior fellow in governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Loveless’s research focuses on education policy and the politics of educational reform. He is the author of The Tracking Wars: State Reform Meets School Policy and editor of Conflicting Missions: Teachers Unions and Educational Reform (Brookings Press). He has contributed chapters to several volumes; published numerous journal articles, reviews, and opinion pieces; and annually authors The Brown Center Report on American Education. Mr. Loveless’s teaching experience includes nine years in California’s public schools and seven years as assistant and associate professors of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mr. Loveless received a Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago in 1992. 

Michael McKeown, a professor of medical science at Brown University, is a cofounder of Mathematically Correct (www.mathematicallycorrect.com), a bipartisan citizens group working to improve mathematics education. Mr. McKeown has three children who have spent more than thirty-one years in public schools in San Diego and Rhode Island. Like most people associated with Mathematically Correct, Mr. McKeown became involved in mathematics education when his children were placed in what he perceived to be ill-designed, misdirected mathematics programs. Mr. McKeown served on committees that wrote the California Mathematics Program Advisory and the San Diego Math Standards. He participated in the early stages of writing the California Science Standards. In addition to his scientific publications, Mr. McKeown has collaborated on reviews of second-, fifth-, and seventh-grade, as well as algebra, math texts. He coauthored a chapter in the book What’s at Stake in the K–12 Standards Wars (ed. S. Stotsky, Peter Lang Publishers, 2000). Dr. McKeown was called to Washington to discuss math issues with Education Secretary Richard W. Riley and has twice been an invited speaker at the Education Leaders Council annual meeting.

Lee Stiff, a professor of mathematics education at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, began his two-year term as president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in April 2000. Mr. Stiff’s involvement with NCTM includes serving on its Board of Directors, the Commission on Teaching Standards for School Mathematics, and the Committee for a Comprehensive Mathematics Education for Every Child. Active in the education community, Mr. Stiff has served as a treasurer and member of the Board of Directors of the Benjamin Banneker Association, as well as a member of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, the American Education Research Association, and the Instrument Development Panel for the 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Currently he is a member of the Mathematical Association of America and the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics. On the state level, Mr. Stiff has served on Board of Directors of the North Carolina Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCCTM). He has authored or coauthored numerous publications and has written more than a dozen articles and reviews in NCTM publications. Mr. Stiff holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a doctorate in mathematics education from North Carolina State University.