Leaving No Child Behind?

Options for Kids in Failing Schools

January 15-16, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Julian Betts, a professor of economics at the University of California-San Diego, is also a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. Examples of his recent work include a theoretical analysis of the impact of educational standards published in the American Economic Review and the coauthored books Determinants of Student Achievement: New Evidence from San Diego and Equal Resources, Equal Outcomes? The Distribution of School Resources and Student Achievement in California. From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Betts served on the National Working Commission on Choice in K-12 Education. From 2004 to 2005, Mr. Betts will serve on the Technical Review Panel for the Longitudinal Study of No Child Left Behind.

Michael Casserly has served as executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, the nation’s primary coalition of large urban public school systems, since January 1992. Before assuming this position, Mr. Casserly served as the organization’s director of legislation and research for fifteen years. Mr. Casserly has written numerous studies, reports and op-ed pieces on urban schools, including Beating the Odds-the nation’s first look at urban school performance on state tests. He has also appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including the Julian Bond Show, All Things Considered, Larry King Live and many others.

Mitchell D. Chester is the assistant state superintendent for policy development at the Ohio Department of Education in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Chester’s responsibilities include assessment development and implementation, as well as alignment of federal and state assessment and accountability policy. His prior professional experience includes serving as the executive director of accountability and assessment for the School District of Philadelphia. His work has appeared in several publications, including the American Education Research Journal, the International Journal of Education Management, and the Harvard Education Letter.

Jeff Cohen is the president of Sylvan Education Solutions. Before joining Sylvan Education Solutions, Mr. Cohen was the senior vice president for business unit management at Prometric, Inc. Mr. Cohen previously served as a political appointee in the Clinton administration. He began his government service as the chief of staff in the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. Later he served as an attorney in the Office of the Counsel to the President.

Michael Cohen became president of Achieve in January 2003. Before joining Achieve, Mr. Cohen was a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute. From 1993 to 2001, Mr. Cohen served in several senior education policy positions in the Clinton administration, including senior adviser to Secretary of Education Richard Riley, special assistant to the president for education policy, and assistant secretary of education for elementary and secondary education.

Richard Lee Colvin has been director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media since May 2003. Before joining the institute, he was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, where he wrote about education for seven years. For most of that time, he covered national education issues. He previously wrote about education for two other newspapers, as well as a number of education publications. In 2000, he was a Michigan Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan.

Jane Cunningham represents Chesterfield in West St. Louis County in the Missouri House of Representatives. Ms. Cunningham was elected vice president of the 2001 Freshman Legislative Class and is chairman of the House Education Committee. She represents Missouri on the Education Task Force of the America Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization of legislators. In addition to her legislative duties, Ms. Cunningham is the marketing director for England & Company Rehabilitation Services, Inc., a medical and vocational rehabilitation company in St. Louis.

Chester E. Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Mr. Finn also serves as a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and senior editor of Education Next. An author of thirteen books, Mr. Finn’s most recent is Rethinking Special Education For a New Century. He has authored more than 300 articles; his work has appeared in numerous publications, including the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, and Education Week. Mr. Finn was a professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University from 1981 until 2002.

Siobhan Gorman covers justice and homeland security for National Journal, where she has focused on the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department’s war on terror initiatives. She previously covered education, politics, and agriculture. Ms. Gorman often writes on education policy for the Washington Monthly. She has appeared on NPR, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and MSNBC’s webcast. A reporter for National Journal since April 1998, she has also edited the magazine’s "People" column, which covers the comings and goings job-wise of Washington players.

Jane Hannaway is an organizational sociologist whose work focuses on the study of educational organizations. She is the director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute. She has also been a senior researcher with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. Ms. Hannaway previously served on the faculty of Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford Universities. She has authored or coauthored four books and numerous papers in education and management journals. She served twice as vice president of the American Educational Research Association and also on the Executive Board.

Keisha Hegamin is president and CEO of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO.) Before joining BAEO, Ms. Hegamin was director of the Schools, Employment, and Education Program at the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition. Before pursuing a career in education reform, Ms. Hegamin worked as a child advocate attorney with the Defender Association of Philadelphia. Ms. Hegamin was recently awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship, which will allow her to study school reform and educational options in New Zealand and Australia.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and executive editor of Education Next. His books include Revolution at the Margins, Spinning Wheels, School Choice in the Real World, Bringing the Social Sciences Alive, and the forthcoming Common Sense School Reform. Mr. Hess is a faculty associate of the Harvard University Program in Education Policy and Governance and currently serves on the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education. Prior to joining AEI, Mr. Hess was a professor of education and politics at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute.

Tom Houlihan is the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents the nation’s chief education officials and state education agency personnel throughout the nation. He serves on the boards and commissions for several organizations, including the Center for State Scholars and the National Center for Education Accountability. Mr. Houlihan previously served as president/CEO of the North Carolina Partnership for Excellence and senior education adviser to Governor James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina.

William Howell is an assistant professor of government at Harvard University. He is the author of Power without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action and coauthor of The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools. He is currently editing a book on the politics of schools boards. Mr. Howell’s work has been published in scholarly journals, including the Journal of Politics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. He is the recipient of the 2001 E.E. Schattschneider Award for the best dissertation in American politics from the American Political Science Association.

Lisa Graham Keegan was named chief executive officer of the Education Leaders Council (ELC) in May 2001. Ms. Keegan was a founding member of ELC in 1995 and a key architect of the organization’s growth. Ms. Keegan was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 1990 and served two terms. During her tenure, she served as vice chairman and chairman of the House Education Committee. In 1994 and 1998, Ms. Keegan was elected state superintendent of public instruction on a platform of rigorous academic standards, annual testing, stronger accountability, and school choice.

John Liechty is an associate superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD.) Mr. Liechty is responsible for the extended day programs for LAUSD and the creation of a new branch, Beyond the Bell. Mr. Liechty is charged with providing coordination, planning, and implementing quality after-school programs in all elementary and middle schools within the LAUSD. Mr. Liechty has been recognized and honored by the California League of Middle Schools and the National League of Middle Schools for work and leadership in the area of middle school reform.

Gail Littlejohn was elected to the Dayton Public School Board in November 2001. She recruited three other candidates to run with her as the Kids First Team. All four were elected giving them a majority on the seven member board. Ms. Littlejohn is president and cofounder of Our Own Image, a division of the Antioch Company in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Ms. Littlejohn is also of counsel with Chernesky, Heyman, and Kress in Dayton and serves as a senior consultant for the Center for Reform of School Systems based in Houston.

Robert Maranto teaches political science and public administration at Villanova University, and previously he taught at Penn, James Madison, and Southern Mississippi Universities. Mr. Maranto has done extensive research on political appointees in government, civil service reform, and school reform, producing more than forty scholarly publications. His op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, and Hartford Courant. Mr. Maranto and his wife, April Gresham, coedited School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools.

Alex Medler is an independent education consultant who specializes in education policy, school choice, and charter schools. Mr. Medler worked for the U.S. Department of Education’s Public Charter Schools Program from 1997 to 2001. Before joining the Department of Education, Mr. Medler worked as a policy analyst for the Education Commission of the States, where he directed research and assistance to state-level policymakers regarding charter schools, public school choice, and deregulation.

David Plank is codirector of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University and a professor in the College of Education. He is a specialist in the areas of educational policy and education finance. He has worked as a consultant in education policy development for the World Bank, USAID, the United Nations Development Program, the Ford Foundation, and Ministries of Education in Africa and Latin America. He has published four books and numerous articles and chapters in a variety of fields, including history of education and economics of education.

Douglas S. Reed is an associate professor of government at Georgetown University and the author of On Equal Terms: The Constitutional Politics of Educational Opportunity. For the 2003-2004 academic year, he has received an advanced studies fellowship through the Education Department at Brown University and is currently a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, where he is conducting research on the local politics of implementation of No Child Left Behind. His teaching and research fields include educational policy, federalism, constitutional law and judicial politics.

Nina Rees leads the newly created Office of Innovation and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. Working with the office of elementary and secondary education, Ms. Rees coordinates the implementation of the public school choice and supplemental services provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Before joining the U.S. Department of Education, Ms. Rees served as an aide to Vice President Cheney, advising him on domestic policy issues. Before joining the White House in January 2001, Ms. Rees advised the Bush campaign on education issues and helped draft the No Child Left Behind education blueprint for the Bush/Cheney transition team.

John Stevens has been the executive director of the Texas Business and Education Coalition since March 1992. Mr. Stevens serves on several boards and committees including the Commissioner’s Advisory Committee on Accountability and the Accountability for Educator Preparation Advisory Committee. In October 2002, U.S. secretary of education Rod Paige appointed Mr. Stevens to a second four-year term on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Mr. Stevens was also appointed to the Negotiated Rulemaking Committee that developed regulations for implementation of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education initiative.

Joe Williams covers the New York City school system for the New York Daily News. Previously, he covered the Milwaukee Public Schools and that city’s voucher program from 1994 to 2000. He has won numerous national and local awards for education reporting. A graduate of Marquette University, he lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons, both of whom attend New York City public schools.