Lynne V. Cheney is a senior fellow at AEI, where she focuses on education policy and standards, giving particular attention to the need of America’s students for a quality education in U.S. history. Before joining AEI, Mrs. Cheney was chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993. She was a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution and, more recently, served on Texas governor George W. Bush’s education team. A novelist and widely published author, Mrs. Cheney has written on education and culture for the New York Times, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She is the author of Telling the Truth (1995) and coauthor with her husband of Kings of the Hill (1996). Mrs. Cheney’s most recent book is America: A Patriotic Primer (2002), an alphabet book for children of all ages and their families that celebrates the ideas and ideals that are the foundations of America. She is currently completing A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, a second alphabet book that honors the accomplishments of American women and will be published in fall 2003.

George K. Cunningham is a professor in educational and counseling psychology in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville. He has written extensively on the topic of large-scale statewide accountability testing and its relationship with teacher preparation, including articles published this year in Bill Evers’ Testing America’s Schoolchildren and R. P. Phelp’s Defending Standardized Testing. Mr. Cunningham has also published three textbooks on education and psychology for potential teachers. He became a faculty member of the University of Louisville in 1975.

Lisa Graham Keegan is chief executive officer of the Education Leaders Council (ELC) and one of the nation’s most prominent-and outspoken-advocates of education reform. Before ELC, she spent a decade leading education reform in the state of Arizona, serving in the state House of Representatives as vice chairman and chairman of the House Education Committee and as state superintendent of public instruction. As superintendent, Ms. Keegan advanced teacher-driven academic standards that were nationally praised for their clarity and rigor and fought successfully for the creation of school choice, including Arizona’s landmark charter school and tuition tax credit laws. Ms. Keegan currently serves on the boards of the Secretary’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, Empower America, Foundation for Teaching Economics, GreatSchools.net, and Children First America.

David G. Imig is president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). He represents AACTE on the Washington Higher Education Secretariat and the Learning First Alliance. He is a senior associate of the National Network for Educational Renewal and member of the Business-Education Council of the Conference Board. Mr. Imig also serves on the Coordinating and Executive Boards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education and is a member of the Executive Committee for the federally-funded National Partnership for Excellence and Accountability in Teaching project. Mr. Imig began his career as a secondary school teacher in Tanzania, completed graduate work in the Foundations of Education, and became an education officer with the U.S.AID missions to Sierra Leone and Liberia. He joined AACTE in 1970 as program director for international activities and was appointed to his current position in 1999. Author of a bimonthly column in AACTE Briefs, Mr. Imig has also contributed chapters to a number of teacher education books.

John E. Stone is a professor in the College of Education at East Tennessee State University. An educational psychologist specializing in learning and classroom behavior management, he gives particular attention to researching teacher effectiveness. Mr. Stone recently authored a study that found only average gains in the achievement of Tennessee students taught by National Board for Professional Teaching Standards-certified teachers. His writing has appeared in Education Week, Educating Teachers: The Best Minds Speak Out (American Council of Trustees and Alumni, 2002), and Teacher Quality (Hoover Institution Press, 2002). Mr. Stone is also founder of the Education Consumers Clearinghouse, a "Consumers Union" for parents, policymakers, employers, journalists, and other members of the public who seek education facts and advice from a consumer perspective.