Andrew Lachman is executive director of the Connecticut Center for School Change after serving for 13 years as Executive Assistant to the Superintendent of Community School District Two in New York City. At District Two, Mr. Lachman served as one of the senior advisors on policy and program development and as director of external affairs. He played a key role in the district's implementation of standards-based education reform and assisted the superintendent in developing and managing innovative educational programs, professional development initiatives for improving teaching and learning, and strategies for enhancing school leadership. He has more than 25 years of experience as a program developer, fundraiser and administrator in non-profit and government agencies. Mr. Lachman has overall responsibility for the Center and its operations and programs.
Benjamin Sherman is principal of the East-West School of International Studies in Queens, New York.
At the time the article was written Bill Purcell was mayor of Nashville, Tennessee. He is currently director of the Institute of Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Deborah (Debi) King directs the Institute's organizational development efforts, including facilitating communication and collaboration between the New York and Providence offices, coordinating with Brown's Office of Human Resources on performance development planning, and serving on the Institute's Leadership Team and Strategic Management Group. She works with education leaders across the country to develop the instructional and organizational capacity of schools and school systems to make data-informed decisions that focus on student achievement. Prior to joining the Institute, she served in a variety of capacities including classroom teacher, curriculum specialist, program coordinator, university instructor, principal, educational consultant, and director of professional development services. She holds a BA in liberal studies from Loyola Marymount University, a master's degree in educational administration from Azusa Pacific University, and a doctoral degree in educational leadership and policy from the University of Utah. Her recent publications include her doctoral study, "Principals' Perceptions of Changes in Practice Resulting from Professional Development Programs" and two articles in Educational Leadership.
Ellen Foley is Associate Director, District Redesign and Leadership at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Assistant Clinical Professor, Master's in Urban Education Policy Program, Brown University. Ellen is responsible for leading the design of District Redesign and Leadership research studies and convenings from concept to product and for managing cross-functional internal teams and external consultants. She also leads the development and production of a variety of tools for district leaders, oversees research and evaluation related to national District Redesign and Leadership field work. She is an assistant clinical professor at Brown, teaching in the Master's in Urban Education Policy Program. Prior to joining the Institute, she was a research specialist at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, where she worked on the evaluation of Children Achieving, Philadelphia's districtwide education reform effort. Ellen holds a BA in political science from Boston College and an MSEd and doctorate in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research interest is urban education, with a focus on the central office's role in leading reform efforts. She co-chairs the American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group on Districts in Research and Reform.
At the time the article was written Frank Barnes was a senior associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. He is currently chief accountability officer for Boston Public Schools.
At the time the article was written, Glynda Hull was professor of education in language, literacy, and culture in the Graduate School of Education of the University of California, Berkeley. Currently she is a professor of English Education, New York University.
At the time the article was written, Janice Bloom was a student at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Currently she is program co-director of the College Inquiry and College Knowledge Programs, Institute for Student Achievement. Previously, she was an assistant professor in the Education Studies Department at Eugene Lang College/The New School for Liberal Studies, where she taught educational sociology, history and policy, and teaching and learning in urban schools. She was a 2005-2006 ASHE/Lumina fellow. Her research has focused on issues of social class, urban schooling, and access to higher education. Her work at Lang included helping to create and run its Institute for Urban Education’s college transition programs.
At the time the article was written Jessica Zacher was a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Education of the University of California, Berkeley. Currently she is an assistant professor of Teacher Education and of Liberal Studies, College of Education, California State University, Long Beach.
Joanna Brown is director of education organizing at the Logan Square Neighborhood Association in Chicago.
James P. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change at Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy. His work explores the policy implementation process at the state, school district, school and classroom levels, focusing on intergovernmental relations and policy-practice relations. While building on the policy implementation research tradition, Spillane has worked to develop a cognitive perspective on the implementation process, exploring the substantive ideas about reforming instruction that local policy-makers, both administrators and teachers, come to understand from state and national reforms. Spillane is also interested in organizational leadership and change and is currently undertaking an empirical investigation of the practice of leadership in urban elementary schools that are working to improve mathematics, science and literacy instruction. In this work, Spillane conceptualizes organizational leadership as a distributed practice involving formal and informal leaders, followers and a variety of organizational tools and artifacts. He is the associate editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.
At the time the article was written, Lori Chajet was a teacher at the East Side Community High School, New York City. Currently she is director of training and program development for Homebase, created by the Center for Human Environments, City University of New York Graduate Center.
Margaret Terry Orr is director of the Future School Leaders Academy at Bank Street College.
Margaret Balch-Gonzalez is a staff editor/research analyst at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and manages a range of editorial projects for publication by the Institute and provides research, documentation, and liaison support for several major Institute projects. Prior to joining the Institute in 2004, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, held corporate marketing and product development positions, and taught K-8 science and ESL in Rhode Island, Argentina, and Ecuador. She has a BA in biology from Harvard University and an MBA from the University of Rhode Island.
Michael Grady is the deputy director at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. He also serves as principal investigator of a major collaboration between the Institute and the National League of Cities that will work with mayors, municipal leaders, and their education policy advisers on strategies to increase the public's awareness, participation and stake in local school-improvement initiatives in the context of No Child Left Behind. Prior to joining the Institute, Mike was a senior research associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, where he managed the research and evaluation portfolio. He has also served as director of research and evaluation for a major urban school district, research associate for a court-appointed committee charged with developing and evaluating magnet schools, and high school teacher in the U.S. and abroad. He has conducted research on the Comer School Development Program, educational equity initiatives, and school-based management at the district level. Mike's research and policy interests include urban education reform, educational equity, community and parent engagement, and research and evaluation design. Mike holds an EdM and an EdD from Harvard University.
Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Women’s Studies and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, CUNY, has taught at CUNY since 1990. Previously she taught at the University of Pennsylvania for more than a decade. Her research focuses on youth in schools, communities and prisons, developed through critical feminist theory and method.
Mónica Byrne-Jiménez is assistant professor in Foundations, Leadership, and Policy Studies at Hofstra University.
Philip Weinberg is the principal of the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology, a school of 1,250 students located in Brooklyn, New York. The school is comprised of students from all over the borough of Brooklyn, and the student body reflects the rich ethnic and socioeconomic mix of the borough. The school has consistently earned the highest marks on New York City’s school rating system and has been named a “High Achieving, Gap Closing” school by New York State. Mr. Weinberg has been an educator for 25 years, including 23 years working at HSTAT. He has been an English teacher, an Assistant Principal, and for the past 9 years has been delighted to serve as the school’s principal.
Richard Lemons, formerly assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, was recently appointed vice president for program and policy at The Education Trust. He recently directed the Institute for Urban School Improvement at the University of Connecticut and was on faculty in the Department of Education Leadership, where he directed and taught within the doctoral program. He worked with the Connecticut Center for School Change and the Fairfield County Community Foundation, in collaboration with urban districts, to design and teach within the Urban School Leaders Fellowship, an initiative designed to enhance leadership capacity within urban districts. He previously was associate director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A former high school teacher, Richard has led summer programs for at-risk youth and served as a change coach for urban high schools. He received a bachelor's in political science from North Carolina State University and master's and doctoral degrees in administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard University.
Robert Rothman is a Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Excellent Education. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, where he edited the Institute’s quarterly magazine, Voices in Urban Education form 2002 to 2009. He has also worked with Achieve, the National Research Council, and the National Center on Education and the Economy, and was a reporter and editor for Education Week. Mr. Rothman has written numerous reports and articles on a wide range of education issues, and he is the editor of City Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2007) and the author of Measuring Up: Standards, Assessments and School Reform (Jossey-Bass, 1995).
Warren Simmons is executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Before joining the Institute in 1998, he was executive director of the Philadelphia Education Fund, where he supported districtwide efforts to enact standards-based reform. He received a B.A. in psychology from Macalester College and a PhD in psychology from Cornell University. He serves on the boards of several national and local education organizations including the Public Education Network, the National Center on Education and the Economy, and the Rhode Island Children's Crusade.
The College Pathways Tool Series
VUE 26 PDF
