Algebra Project and Columbia School of Journalism Brainstorm Session Education Conference March 29-31, 2007

Participant Bios

Rebecca Bailey, Administrative Coordinator, Algebra Project [email protected]

Rebecca Bailey serves as Administrative Coordinator for the Algebra Project National Office. Becca is experienced in working with children in educational setting, and is particularly interested in how young children develop their understanding of community and citizenship. She has designed curricula for constructivist, dialogue-centered classroom activities and for peer mentoring programs. In 2003, Becca spent 6 months studying music and dance in South Africa, and is passionate about connecting diverse peoples through participation in the arts. She studied philosophy and music at Mount Holyoke College, where she earned a B.A. in 2004.

Andre Banks, Director, Media and Public Affairs, Applied Research Center [email protected]

Andre Banks is the Director of Media and Public Affairs at the Applied Research Center and Associate Publisher of ColorLines magazine. In this capacity he brings together media outreach, new media strategy and multimedia production - moving messages to and about people of color in mainstream, ethnic and alternative media.

Andre began his career as an organizer with the Columbus Network for Equal Rights and Justice at Ohio State University where he earned a bachelor degree in political science. He moved on to head the National Student Program at the AFL-CIO, working to build alliances between unions and student organizations concerned with economic justice. As Assistant Director for Public Education and Mobilization at Africa Action, he coordinated the national media strategy for the Africa's Right to Health campaign, building public pressure to fight AIDS in Africa and securing a unanimous resolution in the Republican-controlled Congress against genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Andre has also been a featured media spokesperson for print, television and radio outlets including, BBC World News, Voice of America, National Public Radio, The Nation, The American Prospect and Pound magazine. He is a published writer on race, sexuality and pop culture and edits RaceWire.org, the ColorLines blog. His writing has also appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, ColorLines, The Black Commentator and The Huffington Post.

Lynson Moore Beaulieu, Director of Programs and Strategic Leadership The Schott Foundation for Public Education [email protected]

Ms. Beaulieu has been involved in early childhood and k-12 education for over 25 years with a focus on creating high quality educational experiences for low-income children and children from diverse ethnic, cultural, language, and life experience backgrounds. She is currently the Director of Programs and Strategic Leadership at the Schott Foundation for Public Education in Cambridge, MA, where her portfolio includes education public policy, parent and youth leadership development for education decision-making at the state and local levels, and building public will for high quality public education, especially in communities of color. As a volunteer, Ms. Beaulieu is an active member of the Quality Public School Education as a Civil Right (QECR) Coordinating Committee and also serves

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 as an advisor to a number of innovative national education initiatives. She is published on topics related to high quality early childhood and K-12 education including early language and literacy development, the achievement of African American and other underserved students, early childhood educator preparation and professional development, family involvement, and ethnic, cultural, and language diversity in child development and schooling contexts.

Chelsea Carson, President, Baltimore Algebra Project [email protected]

Chelsea has been involved in advocating for quality education since the Baltimore Algebra Project found out that the BCPSS was in a $58 million deficit. Since then, she has helped coordinate strikes, rallies, petitions, walk-outs, and acts of civil disobedience. Chelsea has shown her dedication to the fight for adequate education in many ways such as raising awareness in the community via her appearance on television and radio broadcasts, and was one of the featured community activists in the documentary, Schooling Baltimore Street. Not only has Chelsea raised awareness in her community, but she has raised awareness all across the United States at multiple conferences from Michigan to South Carolina. Chelsea has encouraged many to affect change in their own communities and to come together to fight for quality education as a civil right. Through the Algebra Project, Chelsea has been able to spread the truth that so many politicians try to hide: that education is segregated by class and ultimately by race.

Chelsea's biggest future goal is to finish college and get a Master's degree in Political Science and Sociology and use these degrees to partake in community organizing and become an elected official to affect change in her community and to change the dynamic of how politicians are perceived.

Ernesto Cortes, Jr., Southwest Regional Director, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) [email protected]

Ernesto Cortes, Jr. is the Southwest Regional Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a non- profit organization founded in Chicago by the late Saul Alinsky. Cortes' affiliation with the IAF officially began in 1972 when he attended the organization's organizer training institute in Chicago. After training, Cortes worked with IAF leaders in Wisconsin and Indiana for a year developing his skills as a community organizer. In 1974 Cortes moved to San Antonio, his native city, where he founded the Communities Organized for Public Service, COPS, and the well-known and highly effective church-based grassroots organization. In the following years Cortes helped found other community-based organizations in cities throughout Texas and the southwest. Together with COPS these organizations became what is now called the Southwest IAF Network. Under Cortes' supervision, the organizations of the network have developed successful initiatives in the areas of job training, economic development, citizenship and education. In the mid-80s, Cortes and the network envisioned and launched an innovative public education initiative, called the Alliance School Initiative, to engage communities in school restructuring and reform. The Alliance School Initiative, as well as the other accomplishments of the network, has been written about in several books and articles. Cortes has received numerous awards and fellowships for his work, including most recently the H. J. Heinz Award for Public Policy and an appointment as a Martin Luther King Visiting Professor at MIT in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Sandy Close, Executive Director, Bay Area Institute/Pacific News Service [email protected]

Sandy is executive director of the Bay Area Institute/Pacific News Service. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1964, Sandy moved to Hong Kong and worked as the China editor for the Far Eastern

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Economic Review. Back in the U.S., she founded the Flatlands newspaper, a raw voice of the inner city communities of Oakland, California. In 1974, she became executive director of the Bay Area Institute/Pacific News Service, helping to develop it into one of the most diverse sources of literary voices and analytical ideas in the U.S. news media. In 1991 she founded YO! (Youth Outlook), a collaboration between writers and young people, and in 1996 she co-founded "The Beat Within," a weekly newsletter of writing and art by incarcerated youth. In 1996 she also founded New California Media, a network of over 75 ethnic news organizations collaborating to produce a weekly TV show, an awards program, and an inter-ethnic media exchange and website. In 1995, Sandy received a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" for her work in communications. In 1997 a film she co- produced- "Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien"- won the Academy Award for best short documentary.

June Cross, Assistant Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism [email protected]

June is an award-winning producer with thirty years of television news and documentary experience. She was most recently an executive producer for This Far by Faith, a six-part PBS series on the African-American religious experience. She worked for PBS's Frontline, CBS News, and PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Her reporting for the NewsHour on the US invasion of Grenada won the 1983 Emmy for Outstanding Coverage of a Single Breaking News Story. Secret Daughter, an autobiographical film that examined how race and color have affected her family, won an Emmy in 1997 and was honored that same year with a duPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.

Her other credits include: Ashes of the Cold War; Showdown in Haiti; The Confessions of RosaLee; and A Kid Kills. Cross was senior producer for the FRONTLINE productions Living on the Edge with correspondent Bill Moyers;Mandela; and School Colors, which won a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism in 1995. She received her B.A. from Harvard, and was a fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University's School of Urban and Public Affairs and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies at Harvard.

David J. Dennis, National Site Development Coordinator, Algebra Project; Program Director, Vanguard Public Foundation [email protected]

President and CEO of Positive Innovations, Inc. and the Southern Initiative of The Algebra Project, Inc. Mr. Dennis is a cum laude graduate of Dillard University, New Orleans, LA and received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Michigan Law School. He was involved in the practice of law before becoming associated with the Algebra Project, a mathematics literacy program designed to increase the proportion of urban, inner city and rural students who complete algebra and higher level mathematics, enter college and later become leading .contributors to the progress of their communities and society.

Since joining the Algebra Project in 1991, he has drawn on the organizing experiences of the 1960's to develop and implement a regional concept to support the activities of the project in sixteen (16) southern sites located in six (6) states; MS, AL, AR, LA, SC and NC. During the 1998-1999 year, these sites included 15 school districts, 45 participating schools, and 98 teachers who provided instruction to over 4000 students. This regional model has yielded many positive results...the connectedness brought on by collaborative efforts has (1) enhanced local capacity among and between stakeholders and programs at the respective sites; (2) maximized their use of funding sources; and (3) helped to develop models of professional development, community development and youth initiatives. These models have evolved from the philosophical premise that "there can be

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 no school reform without community reform" (David Dennis). The common denominator which drives the efforts in the south and which is the basis for this philosophical underpinning is the children i.e., the young people at stake. They become the driving force around which all activities are focused and provide the necessary common ground within the various communities. This model for community reform aimed at school reform continues to be proven as an effective method for creating a community of stakeholders who collaboratively create solutions to problems involving students as they attempt to navigate the many obstacles in their continuing struggle for citizenship and equality.

In addition to his work in the south, Mr. Dennis has been actively involved in the formation of the National Algebra Project and is often a guest speaker, conducting informational workshops throughout the country. He has been written about and interviewed in numerous publications, films and documentaries.

Penny Duckham, Executive Director, Kaiser Media Fellowships program The Henry J.Kaiser Family Foundation [email protected]

Penny Duckham has directed the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation's media fellowships program since its launch in 1993. She also directs the Foundation's media internships program in urban health reporting. Both programs provide print, radio and television reporters with unique opportunities to undertake individual in-depth research and reporting on public health and health policy issues, to help broaden the American public's understanding of these issues. Several hundred U.S. journalists have taken part in these programs, and many remain actively involved in the briefings, site visits, and the journalism training programs organized through the media fellowships.

In response to growing requests from journalists outside the U.S., Ms. Duckham has directed an increasing number of briefings, sitevisits and journalism training programs overseas, with the focus on public health issues and in particular reporting on HIV/AIDS. These include programs in Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, India, southern Africa, Trinidad, and Russia; and special training programs in advance of the International AIDS conferences in Barcelona (2002), Bangkok (2004), and Toronto (2006).

In January 2005, Ms. Duckham launched the Foundation's International Health Journalism program in India as part of a larger Foundation initiative on global health issues made possible through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In India, the focus has mostly been to work with major regional vernacular newspapers in northern States-notably Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Bihar-to expand and inform reporting on HIV/AIDS and related public health issues. Ms. Duckham headed a new program in Africa in 2006, working with journalists through the CNN/MultiChoice Excellence in African Journalism program, with a new award for excellence in HIV/AIDS journalism. The international health journalism programs are now expanding again to work closely with reporters in the Caribbean.

Previously, Ms. Duckham was the director of communications for The Commonwealth Fund, a national philanthropy based in New York City. She worked for several years in London for the U.K. Consumers' Association and in Brussels, in the private office of the President of the European Economic Communities Commission; and as a freelance writer on social policy issues for Which? Magazine and the Financial Times.

Educated in England, Ms. Duckham graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class honors degree in modern history.

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Kathy Engel, Adjunct Professor, NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study [email protected]

Kathy Engel is a writer, activist, teacher, communications and creative consultant for social justice, human rights and peace organizations. Founder and first executive director of the women's human rights organization MADRE, she co founded and is former President of Riptide Communications and co founder of the Hayground School, East End Women In Black, KickAss Artists and YouthSo(u)l. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has performed and conducted workshops throughout the country. She has produced cultural/political events including "talking nicaragua", Moving Towards Home, Imagining Peace, and Stand With Sisters For Economic Justice: Her book of poems "Banish The Tentative" was published in 1989. "Ruth's Skirts", poems and prose, has just been published by IKON Books and she is co editor with Kamal Boullata, of "We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine & Lebanon", InterLink Books, April 2007. She is currently an adjunct professor at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized study.

Susan Fitzgerald, Journalist [email protected]

Susan FitzGerald is a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist with a special interest in children's health. She also teaches journalism at Villanova University. She worked for many years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covered medicine, public health, children's health and early childhood education. She also was a Kaiser Media Fellow, and spent her fellowship year studying and writing about children's health issues, including asthma, lead and cocaine exposure during pregnancy.

Warlene Gary, Chief Executive Officer, National Parent Teacher Association [email protected]

As the National PTA chief executive officer, Warlene Gary draws from her more than two decades of advocacy for children and families to further National PTA's mission to be a powerful voice for children, a relevant resource for parents, and a strong advocate for public education. Throughout her career, Gary has worked with various associations, community groups, and coalitions to continuously advocate for children, parents, and teachers. Most recently, Gary was the director of the National Education Association (NEA) Office of Human and Civil Rights. While with the NEA, Gary developed and implemented the organization's Family-School-Community program, creating a training network for thousands of teachers, parents, leaders, community workers, and education support personnel. Additionally, as the manager of parent and community outreach, Gary was instrumental in creating and implementing parental involvement initiatives in partnership with the association's affiliates. As manager of urban initiatives, Gary developed and implemented programs targeted at urban schools to reduce the achievement gap.

Early in her career, Gary served as acting executive director for the President's Advisory Committee for Women. In this capacity, Gary produced Voices for Women, the 1980 report of the Committee to the President and to the nation. Gary also held positions with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Howard University Center for Study of Handicapped Children and Youth and spent 5 years as a classroom teacher in the Washington, DC, public schools. Gary is a national and international trainer on leadership development.

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Gary, a native of Washington DC, graduated from Howard University with a masters of education degree in special education. She also holds a bachelor of science degree in physical education and health from the District of Columbia Teachers College.

Danny Glover, Actor [email protected]

Actor, producer and humanitarian Danny Glover has been a commanding presence on screen, stage and television for more than 25 years. As an actor, his film credits range from the blockbuster Lethal Weapon franchise to smaller independent features, some of which Glover also produced. Most recently, he completed filming the critically acclaimed feature Dreamgirls directed by Bill Condon and Poor Boy's Game for director Clement Virgo and highly-anticipated Shooter for director Antoine Fuqua and Be Kind, Rewind for director Michel Gondry.

At the same time, Glover has also gained respect for his wide-reaching community activism and philanthropic efforts, with a particular emphasis on advocacy for economic justice, and access to health care and education programs in the United States and Africa. For these efforts, Glover received a 2006 DGA Honor. Internationally, Glover has served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program from 1998-2004, focusing on issues of poverty, disease, and economic development in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and currently serves as UNICEF Ambassador.

In 2004, Glover co-founded Louverture Films (www.louverturefilms.com) dedicated to the development and production of films of historical relevance, social purpose, commercial value and artistic integrity. The New York based company has a slate of progressive features and documentaries including the recently released Bamako, which premiered to superb reviews at the Cannes International Film Festival.

A native of San Francisco Glover trained at the Black Actors' Workshop of the American Conservatory Theater. It was his Broadway debut in Fugard's Master Harold...and the Boys, which brought him to national recognition and led director Robert Benton to cast Glover in his first leading role in 1984's Oscar®-nominated Best Picture Places in the Heart. The following year, Glover starred in two more Best Picture nominees: Peter Weir's Witness and Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. In 1987, Glover partnered with Mel Gibson in the first Lethal Weapon film and went on to star in three hugely successful Lethal Weapon sequels. Glover has also invested his talents in more personal projects, including the award-winning To Sleep With Anger, which he executive produced and for which he won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor; Bopha!; Manderlay; Missing in America; and the film version of Athol Fugard's play Boesman and Lena. On the small screen, Glover won an Image Award and a Cable ACE Award and earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the HBO movie Mandela. He has also received Emmy nominations for his work in the acclaimed miniseries Lonesome Dove and the telefilm Freedom Song. As a director, he earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for Showtime's Just a Dream.

Philip Goldsmith principal, GoldsmithKahnAssociates pgold@[email protected]

Phillip R. Goldsmith is a principal and founder of GoldsmithKahnAssociates, a public issues management consulting firm. He has held senior positions in a broad spectrum of fields including law, journalism, government, banking, and human resource consulting. In his executive and

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 leadership positions, he has helped implement significant change, while emphasizing teamwork and a shared vision.

He was recently named as one of Philadelphia's top "connectors" in a survey of 4,800 Philadelphians by Leadership Inc.

Phil has also held several positions in the private sector. For 12 years, Phil was an executive officer of the PNC Bank Corp. During that time, he was responsible for large operations, including its branch network in Philadelphia and its $7 billion consumer credit business with facilities in more than five states. He also served as president of PNC National Bank, the company's credit card bank. In addition, he oversaw PNC's civic, community, and governmental affairs in the Delaware Valley.

In both the public and private sectors, he initiated and led major re-engineering efforts to reduce costs and enhance service, including consolidation of multi-state consumer loan operations at PNC Bank, reorganization of administrative offices at the School District of Philadelphia and streamlining operations at Fairmount Park and the Recreation Department.

He also spearheaded an innovative reorganization of city's fleet, which significantly reduced the number of cars while relying more on car sharing and hybrid vehicles, saving millions of dollars a year in maintenance, fuel, and operational costs. The initiative was selected by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government as one of top programs in the 2006 Innovations in American Government competition.

Earlier in his career, Phil was an award-winning journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer as a reporter and as an editorial writer where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He currently writes a bi-monthly column for the Philadelphia Daily News.

Phil is active in community affairs and serves on numerous boards. Most recently, Phil volunteered in Louisiana, helping the Red Cross in its hurricane relief efforts, and Costa Rica with Habitat for Humanity. He is a 1966 graduate of Pennsylvania State University and received his J.D. degree from George Washington University's School of Law in 1969. He and his wife Essie have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Carlos Gonzalez, Associate Professor, Sr., Miami Dade College [email protected]

Carlos Gonzalez teaches at Miami Dade College. He has worked in the heart of Little Havana for 14 years. During that time he has shifted his curriculum away from the traditional classroom to the community at large. He has attempted to bring together environmental awareness and social justice through ecological restoration projects and community and school gardens. Community is the primary text in all of his classes.

Irving Hamer, Executive Vice President, TMG Education [email protected]

Dr. Irving Hamer, Jr. is one of the nation's foremost leaders and activists for education reform. As a senior level executive and academician with more than 20 years of successful leadership experience, he emphasizes strategic development, organization development, acquisitions and integration, and fiscal administration. He earlier had a distinguished career in public and non-profit sectors marked by innovative policies and programs.

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 During his 30-plus years as an educator, Dr. Hamer served as New York City Deputy Commissioner of Education, Board of Education member, school administrator, teacher, and professor. His entire career has been dedicated to improving education for the most vulnerable and fragile students in the nation's school systems.

Most recently, Dr. Hamer served as Deputy Superintendent of School Improvement, where he developed and managed implementation of the School Improvement Zone for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida. The 39 low-performing schools in the Zone serve 44,000 students. Results from that effort challenge conventional wisdom about school improvement in urban centers. After one year of re-deployed resources and intensive intervention, an unprecedented level of more than 8,500 students improved at least one performance level on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

Dr. Hamer's career in education dates to the 1960s, when for nearly a decade, he taught in the New York City Public Schools prior to serving as Director of Education for the New York Urban League. As Director of the Street Academy of New York in the 1970s, he managed 12 secondary schools in New York. After a stint as Headmaster of the Maryland Park Heights Street Academy, he became Deputy Commissioner of Education for Comprehensive Social Improvement Planning in New York City with the state education department. As such, he developed new programs and worked with schools in need of assistance by implementing mandates for improvement.

He added a new dimension to his educational authority when he became President of Globe Book Company, part of the Simon & Schuster School Group, and then Executive Vice President of the Secondary Education Group for the company. In that role, he was responsible for strategic planning, product development, technology integration and communications, operations, and new business development for a consortium of businesses.

In 1998, Dr. Hamer was appointed to the New York City Board of Education by C. Virginia Fields, Manhattan Borough President. He spent four years on major policy initiatives including closing the achievement gap, integrating technology into the teaching and learning experience, elimination of low-performing schools and strengthening bilingual education. He later served as Professor of Practice in Education at Columbia University's Teachers College and as co-chairman of TestU.com, a start-up educational service.

In addition to his work with TMG, he serves as a Visiting Professor with the Center for Urban Education and Innovation at Florida International University and as Senior Consultant, Mass Insight Education.

A native of Harlem, NY, he is an avid community participant with strong confidence in the public school system having been a teacher and parent of a child who attended public schools. Dr. Hamer received a BA in Sociology from Ottawa University. He earned an M.Ed. in Administration and Ed.D. in Learning Environments and Social Policy from Harvard University and spent three years as a Senior Research Affiliate at Yale University Institute for Social and Policy Studies.

LynNell Hancock, Associate Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism [email protected] coveringeducation.org/aboutlynnell.html

LynNell Hancock is a reporter and writer specializing in education and child and family policy issues who has taught journalism at Columbia J-School since 1993. In addition to contributing to Newsweek, Columbia Journalism Review and The New York Times she covered education for The

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Village Voice, the New York Daily News, and Newsweek, and has served on the National Advisory Board for Journalism Fellowships in Child and Family Policy. She is author of Hands to Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock (2002), the upcoming Prairie Fires (2007) and contributed to The Public Assault on America's Children: Poverty, Violence and Juvenile Injustice (2000), to America's Mayor (2005). Hancock holds an M.A. in East Asian Languages and Literature and and an M.S. in Journalism, both from Columbia.

Junko Kim, Fund Developer, Algebra Project [email protected]

Junko Kim is the Fund Developer at the Algebra Project's National Office. She brings over five years of managerial and organizational advancement experiences in the US and abroad. Junko is on the Matahari Development Committee, Harvard Graduate School of Education Recent Alumni Circle Committee, and board of the Barnard Club of Boston. She received a M.Ed. in School Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005, and holds a B.A. degree in Political Science from Barnard College and MA math teacher's license.

Raquiba LaBrie, Program Director, Sentencing & Incarceration Alternatives Project Open Society Institute [email protected]

Raquiba LaBrie is the Program Director of the Open Society Institute's Sentencing & Incarceration Alternatives Pro (the Alternatives Project). The Alternatives Project seeks to reduce the scale of incarceration in the U.S. by: eliminating race and class disparities in sentencing and incarceration; advancing sentencing reform; promoting alternatives to incarceration; and limiting prison growth and prison privatization. Raquiba began her tenure at OSI in 2000 as the Program Officer for OSI's Access to Justice Program. The Access to Justice Program made grants to promote equal access to quality civil legal aid for low-income communities and communities of color. Before joining OSI, she was an associate in the exempt organizations practice group of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. While there she represented a range of private foundations and non-governmental organizations, including community economic development organizations, social justice activists, and funders supporting micro-credit lending institutions in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School.

David Lawrence, Jr., President, Early Childhood Initiative Foundation; University Scholar, Early Childhood Development and Readiness-University of Florida [email protected]

David Lawrence Jr. retired in 1999 as publisher of The Miami Herald to work in the area of early childhood development and readiness. He is president of The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and "University Scholar for Early Childhood Development and Readiness" at the University of Florida. In 2002 he led the campaign for The Children's Trust, a dedicated source of early intervention and prevention funding for children in Miami-Dade; he now is its chair. Named by Gov. Jeb Bush to the Florida Partnership for School Readiness, he chaired that oversight board for two terms. He is a national board member of the Foundation for Child Development. In 2002-3 he chaired the Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Child Protection. In 2002, he was a key figure in passing a statewide constitutional amendment to provide high-quality pre-K availability for all 4 year olds. He is a board member and former chair of the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade and Monroe. The David Lawrence Jr. K-8 School, a Miami-Dade Public School for ultimately 1,600 students, opened in

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 2006 across from the north campus of Florida International University. A fully endowed chair in early childhood studies has been established in his name at the University of Florida College of Education.

Before coming to Miami in 1989, he was publisher and executive editor of the Detroit Free Press. He came to the Free Press in 1978 from the Charlotte Observer where he was editor. He joined then Knight Newspapers (now Knight Ridder) in 1971. (During his tenure as publisher of The Miami Herald, the paper won five Pulitzer Prizes.)

He is a graduate of the University of Florida and named "Outstanding Journalism Graduate." He graduated from the Advanced Management program at the Harvard Business School in 1983. In 1988, he was honored with Knight-Ridder's top award, the John S. Knight Gold Medal. He has 12 honorary doctorates, including from his alma mater, the University of Florida. His national honors include the Ida B. Wells Award "for exemplary leadership in providing minorities employment opportunities" and the National Association of Minority Media Executives award for "lifetime achievement in diversity." His writing awards include the First Amendment Award from the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Inter American Press Association Commentary Award. He served twice as chair of the national Task Force on Minorities in the Newspaper Business, was the 1991-92 president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the 1995-96 president of the Inter American Press Association.

His board activity: The Miami Art Museum, United Way and the New World School of the Arts (each formerly as chair), and the University of Florida Foundation. As a member of the Governor's Commission on Education, he chaired the Readiness Committee. He was the local convening co- chair of the 1994 Summit of the Americas. And he co-founded a non-profit vocational-technical school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

He and Roberta, a master's graduate in social work from Barry, live in Coral Gables and have 3 daughters and 2 sons. His honors include: "Family of the Year" from Family Counseling Services, "Father of the Year" by the South Florida Father's Day Council, the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Advocacy Award and the Public Policy Award of the Early Childhood Association of Florida. This year he was honored for "Lifetime Achievement" at the Dr. Martin Luther King Spirit of Excellence Awards benefit. Nationally, he has been honored with the American Public Health Association Award of Excellence, the Lewis Hine Award for Children and Youth and the "Children's Champion" award from the National Black Child Development Institute.

Nicholas Lemann, Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism [email protected]

Nicholas Lemann was born, raised and educated in New Orleans. He began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper there, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American History and Literature and was President of the Harvard Crimson. After graduation he worked at The Washington Monthly, as an associate editor and then managing editor; at Texas Monthly, as an associate editor and then executive editor; at The Washington Post, as a member of the national staff; at The Atlantic Monthly, as national correspondent; and at The New Yorker, as staff writer and then Washington Correspondent. On September 1, 2003, he became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, at the end of a process of re-examination of the school's mission conducted by a national task force convened by the university's President, Lee C. Bollinger.

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Lemann has published five books, most recently Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006); The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (1999), which helped lead to a major reform of the SAT; and The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991), which won several book prizes. He has written widely for such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Slate, and American Heritage; worked in documentary television with Blackside, Inc., Frontline, the Discovery Channel, and the BBC; and lectured at many universities. Lemann continues to write for The New Yorker, and serves on the boards of directors of the Authors Guild, the Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and the Society of American Historians, and is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He lives in Pelham, New York with his wife, Judith Shulevitz, a critic and author, and four children.

Daniel Losen, Senior Education Law and Policy Associate, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard [email protected]

Daniel J. Losen (J.D., M.Ed.) is a Senior Education Law and Policy Associate with The Civil Rights Project at Harvard. His work at CRP concerns the impact of federal, state and local education law and policy on students of color. His efforts have focused on revealing and remedying the high school dropout crisis, on reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, on addressing the school to prison pipeline and the resulting disproportionate minority confinement, and on racial inequity in special education. On these and related topics he conducts law and policy research, publishes books, reports, and articles, and provides guidance and consultation for civil rights advocates, policymakers, and educators. Mr. Losen is often quoted in the media in his areas of concentration and frequently assists journalists at all levels engaged in background research. Mr. Losen also works as an independent consultant for civil rights groups, think tanks and state and local educational agencies. Before becoming a lawyer, Mr. Losen taught in public schools for 10 years, including work as a school founder of an alternative public school. He has also worked as a musician, story-teller, and environmental activist.

Robert McClintock, Professor, Teacher's College Columbia University [email protected]

Robbie McClintock (Ph.D., Columbia University) holds the John L. and Sue Ann Weinberg Chair in the Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He has published diverse books and essays on the intersection of political and educational theory in Western thought and on the cultural significance of innovations in information and communications technologies. Between 1986 and 2002, McClintock directed the Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT), a development group prototyping ways to enable children and teachers to work regularly with advanced curricular resources over the Internet. Currently, McClintock collaborates on www.studyplace.org constructing a global cultural commons - an engine of knowledge and thought, free and open to all, advancing the world's responses to the basic question, What educates?

Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar, NYU Steinhardt School of Education [email protected]

Deborah Meier has spent more than 40 years in public K-12 urban schools starting as a sub and kindergarten teacher in Chicago in 1964. She went on to be the principal of a number of K-12 innovative public schools, the author of several books (The Power of Their Ideas, Beacon Press was the first) as well as many essays on her experiences. She was a founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, and is still a member of their

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Board. While most of her work took place in East Harlem where she founded 4 schools, she also started a school in the Roxbury section of Boston from 1997-2005.. She received a MacArthur for her work, as well as numerous honorary degrees. She is currently also a senior scholar at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education.

Dale Mezzacapa, Journalist [email protected]

Dale Mezzacappa covered education for the Philadelphia Inquirer for two decades. A reporter for 35 years, she began her career at The Record in Bergen County, NJ, where she covered politics and government. Before taking the education beat at The Inquirer, she worked in the Trenton and Washington bureaus. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1990-91 and has won several national and local awards for her writing. She now does freelance writing and is on the board of the Education Writers Association. In the fall, 2006 semester, she taught a journalism course at Swarthmore College.

Chad Milner, Greater Boston Site Director, The Young People's Project [email protected]

Chad Milner, Greater Boston Site Director, The Young People's Project. In his current role Chad serves as the site director of YPP programs in Cambridge and Boston, MA; The Greater Boston YPP site trains and employs approximately 60 college and high school math literacy workers per year, who in turn service around 500 school age participants. He is an Algebra Project alumni and former Boston Public School secondary mathematics teacher. Chad attended Cambridge Public Schools and is a graduate of Stanford University.

Jessy Molina, National Coordinator [email protected]

Jessy Molina graduated from Harvard College in 1999 and from Yale Law School in 2002. Upon graduation from law school, Jessy accepted a Soros Justice Fellowship to work with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on Books Not Bars, a state-wide California project with the goal of shifting state funding priorities away from incarceration and toward education and youth opportunities. After completing a two-year fellowship, Jessy worked for the John Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University. At the Gardner Center, she worked with high school students at McClymonds High School in Oakland as Director of the Youth Engaged in Leadership and Learning (Y.E.L.L.) Project to develop and implement a youth-led social justice curriculum. Jessy currently serves on the National Board of Directors for the Young People's Project, a youth organization committed to supporting young people to take ownership of their own education. Jessy enjoys learning from and with the young people she works with, especially her 10 month-old daughter, Maya.

Michael Molina, National Coordinator [email protected]

Born and raised in New Orleans, Michael Molina is an organizer, educator, and public policy advocate. After graduating Magna Cum Laude Xavier University and attaining a law degree from Yale Law, where he helped organize and facilitate the work of numerous local youth empowerment projects including UMOJA International, Michael was a lead organizer for the Books Not Bars project where he was responsible for facilitating grassroots organizing, planning popular education trainings

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 and events, coordinating media and legislative advocacy, and developing research documents and outreach materials. Michael then designed the curriculum for and spent two years as facilitator of the ROOTS project of Balboa High School, San Francisco, which facilitates high school student's personal and leadership development through political education, creative writing and performance. Michael is a five-time Bay Area poetry slam champion, published author, and product of New Orleans Public Schools.

Arlene Morgan, Associate Dean of Prizes and Programs, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism [email protected]

In her role as associate dean, Morgan oversees the administration of the school's many prestigious prizes and professional development workshops. In addition, she directs the annual "Let's Do It Better!" Workshop on Journalism, Race and Ethnicity. She is the co-editor of The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity," a compilation text book, DVD, and website from award- winning stories from her program.

In 2007, Morgan oversaw the launch of the new Punch Sulzberger News Media Executive Leadership Program, a performance challenge-based training program for news executives, in collaboration with the Columbia Business School Executive Leadership program.

Morgan joined the Columbia staff in August 2000 after a 31-year career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she served as an assistant managing editor for readership, hiring and staff development. In addition to her expertise on issues of covering and hiring for diversity, Arlene-a certified Maynard Institute diversity trainer, as well as a Zenger-Miller management trainer-developed an expertise in newspaper credibility when she served as The Inquirer's liaison to the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Credibility project. She conducts workshops on credibility issues and on diversity for news organizations around the country, using the Maynard fault lines approach, along with examples of outstanding reporting from the "Let's Do It Better!" program.

In 1995, Morgan was honored with the first Knight Ridder Excellence in Diversity Award for her work to diversify the Inquirer's staff and for her leadership in fostering diversity issues throughout Knight Ridder newspapers, corporate owner of The Inquirer. A graduate of Temple University, Morgan has lectured at several universities, including Columbia, and was a fellow in 1996-1997 at the Freedom Forum's Media Studies Center.

Dr. Robert P. Moses, President and Founder, Algebra Project [email protected]

Dr. Robert P. Moses is the President, Founder, and Director of Material Development of the Algebra Project, Inc., and serves on the Board of Directors. Each month, he reaches thousands of people around the country to build a coalition for quality education in America. Dr. Moses was a driving force behind the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Convention. From 1969-1976, he worked for the Ministry of Education in Tanzania, East Africa, where he was chairperson of the math department at the Same school. Dr. Moses returned to the USA in 1976 to continue to pursue doctoral studies in Philosophy at Harvard. He has received honorary degrees from universities and awards for his work in social justice from national institutions, including the Heinz Award for the Human Condition and the Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship.

Benjamin Moynihan, Director of Operations, Algebra Project [email protected]

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Benjamin Moynihan is the Director of Operations at the Algebra Project. He specializes in building alliances across multiracial and multigenerational boundaries through education, technology and the arts. He has worked with the AP Inc. for over 15 years, demonstrating his commitment to long-term educational reform. During 1988-1989, he studied Djimbe drumming at the Conservatoire National De Musique in Dakar, Senegal. He was an integral developer for AP's African Drums & Ratios Curriculum. In 1999, he received a Master of Education degree in the Technology in Education and Arts in Education Programs at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Ben holds a B. A. in Non-Western Music from Dartmouth College.

Robert Nathenson, Research Analyst to the National Office, Algebra Project [email protected]

Robert Nathenson is a research analyst for the National Office of the Algebra Project. He moved to Boston September 1st, immediately after completing a Master's degree in sociology from the University of Oxford. The year before he completed a B.A. Cum Laude in history and American cultures studies from Washington University in St. Louis.

Robert's master's thesis focused on the socio-economic discrepancies of black and white people in the public and private sectors in England, the United States, and Canada. His undergraduate thesis evaluated the efforts of black aid organizations in St. Louis between the World Wars. During his senior year at Washington University he participated in the group 'Black Man White Man,' in which he and his fellow group members explored inter-racial power relationships, and which provided a far more personal perspective on the struggle for equality than lectures and reading from class.

Dr. Moses, one of the men Robert had studied in his Civil Rights class, visited Washington University in St. Louis during his senior year. Dr. Moses and Robert met in person once the speaking event was over. Though Robert left for England the following fall he kept Dr. Moses and the Algebra Project in mind. After spending the summer writing his thesis, he moved to Boston and though he took employment at the law firm Holland & Knight LLP, he quickly made contact with Ben Moynihan to do work for the Algebra Project in a volunteer role.

In the late fall Robert met with Dr. Moses and Nicholas Lemann in New York at the initial meeting which led to the conference in Columbia on March 30th-31st, 2007. Since then he has researched editorial coverage of the 1964 Democratic Convention, and analyzed black and white newspaper coverage of the murders of Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwermer for the conference.

Alice Pifer, Director of Professional Education, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism [email protected]

Alice Irene Pifer is Director of Professional Education at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She is also co-editor of The Authentic Voice: The Best Reporting on Race and Ethnicity, a multi-media teaching tool including a book, DVD and website. (Columbia University Press, 2006) Before joining the Journalism School in 2003, Pifer was a producer at ABC News for 20 years with the newsmagazine 20/20 but began her career at CBS News. She's won numerous awards, including two Emmys, for her reporting on a wide range of topics including race relations, social and health issues, human rights violations, & the arts and sciences. Her 2000 story "The Family Secret" was honored both by Columbia's Let's Do It Better" award for excellence in reporting on race and ethnicity and by the National Association of Black Journalists. She has twice been a visiting faculty

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 member at the Poynter Institute for its "Writing about Race" seminar and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1995-1996.

Robert Pierre, General Assignment Reporter, The Washington Post [email protected]

Robert Pierre is a general assignment reporter for the Washington Post. He has been at the newspaper for 14 years, covering issues including welfare reform, politics and government, education and crime. For three years, he was stationed in Chicago as the newspaper's midwest bureau chief responsible for a dozen states. Most recently, he was a member of a team of reporters and editors that spent a year writing about black men. Robert has taught journalism at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and at Dillard University in New Orleans. A native of Louisiana, he graduated from Louisiana State University. He is a member of the board of directors of the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism and a longtime member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Rebecca Palpant, Senior Program Associate, The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism [email protected]

Rebecca Palpant is the Senior Program Associate for The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism at The Carter Center Mental Health Program in Atlanta, Georgia. The work of the program is the result of Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter's 30 years of advocacy on mental health issues. Ms. Palpant develops and oversees a Journalism Fellowship program that each year awards stipends to ten professional journalists in the United States, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to produce a significant work on mental health or mental illnesses. Program expansion will include Romania within the next year. Over 78 journalists have been awarded to date and Fellows have garnered awards from the National Mental Health Association (NMHA), American Psychiatric Association (APA), recognition from the Peabody committee and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and nominations for the Emmy and two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize.

Ms. Palpant is an active participant on advisory boards and within national work groups related to stigma and accurate portrayals of mental illnesses in the media including the national anti-stigma campaign funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and supported by the Ad Council, Voice Awards, Entertainment Industries Council, and Emory University Anti-stigma Task Force.

Before arriving at The Carter Center, Rebecca worked in the corporate setting providing project oversight for customer education and training in e-commerce solutions for more than 10,000 migrating customers. Prior to her project management experience, Rebecca was an assessment counselor with a psychiatric treatment program that provided inpatient, partial hospitalization, day treatment and outpatient counseling.

Rebecca received her Master of Science in Community Counseling from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. She resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her two dogs Abby and Beb6.

Steven Rasmussen, President, KCP Technologies and Key Curriculum Press

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 [email protected]

Steven Rasmussen is president not only of KCP Technologies but also its publishing affiliate, Key Curriculum Press, a 31-year-old mathematics publishing company which Mr. Rasmussen founded. Mr. Rasmussen was a leader of The Geometer's Sketchpad geometry software development team and also the editor of Discovering Geometry: An Inductive Approach, a high school geometry textbook published by Key Curriculum in 1989. He is the author of Key to Fractions, Decimals and Percents, workbook series published by Key Curriculum Press. Mr. Rasmussen has served as the Principal Investigator on two National Science Foundation projects: one to support teachers using technology in teaching geometry, and the other to promote discovery and cooperative learning through professional development. He has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and holds a master's degree in mathematics education from Temple University. He taught secondary mathematics for seven years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Emeryville, California. Mr. Rasmussen is a past Secretary and Board Member of Women and Mathematics Education, an NCTM affiliate, and has served on the board of the California Mathematics Council- Northern Section. He is currently Vice President of the Emery Education Foundation and a member of the Education Department Advisory Board of the University of California Berkeley Extension and of the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum Advisory Board at Michigan State University. He has given hundreds of workshops on geometry and other topics at local, state, regional, national, and international professional meetings.

Irwin Redlener, MD, President, The Children's Health Fund; Associate Dean, Public Health Advocacy and Preparedness; Director, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health [email protected]

Dr. Redlener is president and co-founder, along with singer-songwriter, Paul Simon of The Children's Health Fund, a philanthropic initiative created to develop health care programs in some of the nation's most medically underserved urban and rural communities. He is also associate dean, professor of Clinical Public Health and Pediatrics, as well as director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

In his role as pediatrician-child advocate and president of The Children's Health Fund, Dr. Redlener has published, spoken and testified extensively on the subjects of health care for homeless and indigent children, child abuse and neglect and national health policy. Recognized as a national expert on a range of issues, Dr. Redlener also speaks and writes extensively on national disaster preparedness policies, pandemic influenza, the threat of terrorism in the U.S., the impact and consequences of major natural disasters and related issues.

Dr. Redlener has worked extensively in the Gulf region following hurricane Katrina where he helped establish on-going medical and public health programs. He also organized medical response teams in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 and has had disaster management leadership experience internationally and nationally. He is the author of Americans At Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared For Megadisasters and What We Can Do Now, published in August 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

In his various professional capacities Dr. Redlener has traveled in Europe, the Soviet Union and Central America. He has assisted relief efforts in Honduras, Guatemala, Ethiopia and South Florida.

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 From 1971-73 he directed a rural, VISTA-run health center in East Arkansas. Dr. Redlener has also served as director of grants and medical director of USA for Africa and Hands Across America. The nationally acclaimed New York Children's Health Project, one of the country's largest health care program for homeless children and their families, was developed in 1987 by Dr. Redlener. It is the model for a number of innovative health care projects in The Children's Health Fund's network of programs serving disadvantaged child populations in 21 urban and rural communities across the country. In 1993, Dr. Redlener served as a member of the White House Task Force on Health Reform, under President Clinton. From 1997 through 2003, Dr. Redlener also had a lead role in the development of The Children's Hospital at Montefiore, where he served as president and chief spokesperson. This hospital remains one of the most advanced and innovative facilities of its kind in the world.

Dr. Redlener received his M.D. degree from the University of Miami School of Medicine, and pediatric training at Babies Hospital of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, the University of Colorado Medical Center and the University of Miami-Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. He holds an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Hunter College of the City University of New York, among numerous other awards and honors.

Raynard Sanders Ed.D., Special Consultant, Algebra Project, and Vanguard Public Foundation [email protected]

Dr. Sanders has over thirty years of experience in teaching, educational administration, and economic and community development. As a principal of a New Orleans high school, he was recognized by the Louisiana State Department of Education for guiding his high school through four consecutive years of improvement on the state graduate exit exam. He developed the first high school DNA lab in the state of Louisiana and created the Creole Cottage Project, an innovative program for his students to build and renovate houses in the school's community. Dr Sanders established a school health clinic at his high school that serviced students from neighboring schools. He also served as a faculty member of the New Orleans Public Leadership Academy which was designed to provide training for aspiring school administrators. In 1992 he founded the New Orleans Algebra Project and secured funding (over $2,000,000) to train over 100 teachers in metropolitan New Orleans. Dr. Sanders also served as professor and Interim Director in the Master of Arts in Urban Education Program at Southern University at New Orleans. He also served as the Executive Director of The National Faculty at New Orleans, a professional development agency design to improve the quality of teaching in poor performing schools throughout the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Sanders received his B.A. from Dillard University in New Orleans, a Masters of Educational Administration from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and his Doctorate of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University Teachers in New York City.

Paul Socolar, Editor and director, Philadelphia Public School Notebook [email protected]

Editor and director of the Notebook since 1999, Paul was one of the Notebook's founders in 1994. The Notebook is a nonprofit quarterly newspaper and website covering the Philadelphia school system while trying to support grassroots activism for educational quality and equity. Paul came to the Notebook as a public school parent with a long history of involvement in public education and other social justice issues. His children both recently graduated from Philadelphia public schools. Prior to becoming Notebook editor, he worked on education issues for the National Coalition of Education Activists and the American Friends Service Committee. Originally from New York City, Paul got his start in journalism as a high school (and then college) newspaper editor. He is a graduate of

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Haverford College. His professional work in the nonprofit sector began as administrative coordinator for Bread and Roses Community Fund.

Ernest R. Sotomayor, Director of Career Services, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism [email protected]

Ernest R. Sotomayor directs the Journalism School's efforts in career counseling, assisting students in finding opportunities such as internships, fellowships and fulltime employment in print, broadcast and online media fields. He joined Columbia in February 2005 after 16 years as an editor at Newsday in Long Island, New York.

Ernest Sotomayor began his career as a reporter at the El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post in 1976, and in 1979 joined the Dallas Times Herald, where he worked as a reporter and editor. At the Times Herald, he managed a yearlong project in 1987 covering the immigration amnesty program, which won numerous state and national prizes, including the SDX-SPJ's National Gold Medal for Public Service.

Ernest joined New York Newsday in 1989 and was Brooklyn/Queens Editor. He later served as Newsday's Long Island regionals editor and deputy business editor. Prior to joining Columbia he was Long Island editor for Newsday.com, overseeing local coverage on the newspaper's web site. He served for two years as president of UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc., and presided over its third national convention in August 2004 in Washington, the largest journalism convention ever held. In 1986, he was co-director of the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at UC Berkeley for the Institute for Journalism Education (now the Maynard Institute).

Liz Willen, Assistant Director, Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media Teachers College, Columbia University [email protected]

Liz Willen became the assistant director of the Hechinger Institute for Education and the Media at Teachers College/Columbia University in March, 2006. Since it's launch in 1996, the Hechinger Institute has sponsored more than 67 seminars attended by nearly 2,000 journalists who write, edit or editorialize about education. A Tufts University and Columbia Journalism School graduate, Willen spent a decade at Newsday/New York Newsday, where she covered the New York City public school system and City Hall before joining Bloomberg News in 2001. She's won an array of awards for education writing, including first place from the Education Writer's Association for Magazine Writing in 2005 and a Front Page Award for beat reporting on education that same year. She also shared the 2005 George Polk Award for Heath writing with two Bloomberg Market Magazine colleagues. Liz is also an active New York City public school parent.

Amy Stuart Wells, Professor of Sociology and Education, Teacher's College, Columbia University [email protected]

Amy Stuart Wells is a Professor of Sociology and Education and the Deputy Director for Research of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research and writing has focused broadly on issues of race and education and more specifically on educational policies such as school desegregation, school choice, charter schools, and tracking and how they shape and constrain opportunities for students of color.

She was the principal investigator of a five-year study of adults who attended racially mixed high schools funded by the Spencer, Joyce and Ford Foundations. She is co-author of a report from that

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 study, How Desegregation Changed Us:The Effects of Racially Mixed Schools on Students and Society, with Jennifer Jellison Holme, Anita Tijerina Revilla, and Awo Korantemaa Atanda. Their forthcoming book from this study, Both Sides Now: The Story of Desegregation's Graduates, will be published in 2007.

Wells is the author and editor of numerous other books and articles, including co-editor with Janice Petrovich of Bringing Equity Back: Research for a New Era in Educational Policy Making (2005, Teachers College Press); editor of Where Charter School Policy Fails: The Problems of Accountability and Equity (2002, Teachers College Press); author of "The 'Consequences' of School Desegregation Take Two: The Mismatch Between the Research and the Rationale (2001) Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly; co-author with Robert L. Crain of Stepping over the Color Line: African American Students in White Suburban Schools (Yale University Press, 1997); ); co-editor with A.H. Halsey, Hugh Lauder, and Phillip Brown of Education: Culture, Economy and Society (Oxford University Press, 1997); and co-author with Irene Serna of "The Politics of Culture: Understanding Local Political Resistance to Detracking in Racially Mixed Schools," Harvard Educational Review" (Spring, 1996).

She is the recipient of several honors and awards, including a 2001-02 Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's Scholars Program; the 2000 Julius & Rosa Sachs Lecturer, Teachers College-Columbia University; and the 2000 AERA Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. In 1999-2000 she was a Russell Sage Visiting Scholar. In 1995-96 she was a National Academy of Education-Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral fellow.

Joan Wynne, Associate Director, Center for Urban Education and Innovation, [email protected]

Joan Wynne, Ph.D. is an Associate Director of the Center for Urban Education and Innovation in the College of Education and a Professor of Urban Education at Florida International University in Miami. Once a high school English teacher, Wynne taught for over 10 years at Morehouse College, where she designed and directed The Mays Teacher Scholars Program. At Georgia State University, she was the Associate Director of the Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence, where she co- designed and directed an Urban Teacher Leadership Master's Program. Her research interests include language literacy, the instruction of urban children, teachers and parents; and the impact of racism in schools. She received "The MLK Torch of Peace Award for the Promotion of Racial Harmony" in 2001. Her newest publication is Racism, research, & educational reform: Voices from the city, co-edited with Joanne Kilgour Dowdy.

Kristal Brent Zook, Journalist [email protected]

An investigative journalist who holds a Ph.D. in cultural studies, Kristal Brent Zook is a contemporary scholar who is known for bringing depth and nuance to her reporting about race, gender, politics, and popular culture in America. Currently an award-winning contributing writer for Essence magazine, Zook is an acclaimed public speaker and associate adjunct professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches a course in Feature Writing.

Her work on film, television, and culture has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, USA Weekend, The Village Voice, The LA Weekly, Vibe, Honey, SAVOY, Emerge, and many other publications. She has worked as an editor and producer for television and radio, most recently on National Public Radio's "The Tavis Smiley

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007 Show" and she is a frequent commentator who has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, MTV, BET,and TV-One.

Her first book, Color By Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television, published by Oxford University Press in 1999, looks at the politics of race and representation in shows such as In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Martin, New York Undercover, Living Single, Roc, and South Central.

More recently, she published Black Women's Lives: Stories of Power and Pain (Nation Books, 2006), which explores the personal and professional experiences of 10 women from all walks of life, all across the country, from a dairy farmer in Vermont to a filmmaker in Hollywood. Within six months of its release, Black Women's Lives went into its third printing. Her forthcoming book is about black- owned television and radio from the 1970's to the present and expands on a New York Times magazine article about TV-One, an African American-owned cable network that launched in 2004.

Education Conference March 29-31, 2007