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F Federal Role in Education is Needed to the 21 Century. lessons from NCLB and Beyond.

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About our speakers

Chester Finn, Jr. is a scholar, educator and public servant who has been at the forefront of the national education debate for 35 years. Born and raised in Ohio, he received his doctorate from Harvard in education policy. He has served, inter alia, as a Professor of Education and Public Policy at Vanderbilt, Counsel to the U.S. ambassador to India, Legislative Director for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for Research and Improvement. A senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and chairman of Hoover's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, Finn is also President of the Thomas B.Fordham Foundation. He serves on the board of several other organizations concerned with primary-secondary schooling. The author of 16 books and more than 400 articles, his work has appeared in such publications as The Weekly Standard, Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Education Week, HarvardBusiness Review and Boston Globe. Dr. Finn is the recipient of awards from the Educational Press Association of America, Choice Magazine, the Education Writers Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colgate University. He and his wife, Renu Virmani, a physician, have two grown children and two adorable little granddaughters. They live in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Deborah W.Meier is currently on the faculty of 's Steinhardt School of Education, as senior scholar and adjunct professor as well as Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools. Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and headstart teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools. During this period she founded a local Coalition center, which networked approximately fifty small Coalition-style K-12 schools inthe city. Between 1992-96 she also served as co-director of a project (Coalition Campus Project) that successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools. She was an advisor to New York City's Annenberg Challenge and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 1995-1997. From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180 children in the Roxbury community. Meier is on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, The Nation and the Harvard Education Letter. She is a Board member of the Educational Alliance, the Association of Union Democracy, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Panasonic Foundation, and a founding member of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation and the Forum for Democracy and Education, among others. Meier attended Antioch College (1949-51) and received an MA in History from the University of Chicago (1955). She has received honorary degrees from Bank Street College of Education, Brown, Bard, Clark, Teachers College of , Dartmouth, Harvard, Hebrew , Hofstra, The New School, Lesley College, SUNY Albany, UMASS Lowell, and Yale. She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1987. Her books, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), InSchools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.

Diane Ravitch is a research professor at New York University, a non-resident senior fellow at the , and a member of the board of the New America Foundation. She is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and the Society of American Historians. From 1997-2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. During the first Bush administration, Ravitch served as an assistant secretary for educational research and improvement and as a counselor to the U.S. Department of Education. She is a former professor of history and education at Columbia University's Teachers College and a former adviser to Poland's Ministry of Education. In2005, the United Federation of Teachers recognized Ravitch's efforts "to make a difference inthe lives of New York City school children" and awarded her the prestigious John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education. She was also a recipient of the Breukelein Institute's 2005 Gaudium Award. Ravitch is the editor of many publications, including the annual Brookings Papers on Education Policy. She edited The Schools We Deserve, Debating the Future of American Education, and The American Reader. She has many books to her credit including The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), winner of the Hoover Institution's 2004 Uncommon Book Award; Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms; National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide; What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (with Hoover senior fellow and Koret Task Force member Chester E.Finn Jr.); The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973; and The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980. Her publications have been translated into many languages. Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, , and the Brookings Review. Ravitch, a historian of education, has lectured on democracy and civic education throughout the world. Her website is www.dianeravitch.com.

Roy Romer was formerly Superintendent of Schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District. As Superintendent, he focused resources and attention on instruction and construction of schools. He advocated ambitious literacy and math plans that included computer-based leading programs and teacher training. As a result, scores in elementary school reading and math were above the national levels for the first time in decades. Romer was Governor of Colorado for three terms, from 1986 to 1998, becoming the nation's senior Democratic governor, and was the general chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1997 to 2000. He was vice chair of the Democratic. Leadership Council, an information-age think tank that examines national political and policy issues, where he studied effective educational strategies and school reform initiatives. He served as chair of the Educational Commission of the States and the National Education Goals Panel. Romer was a legal officer in the U.S. Air Force and practiced law in Colorado. Romer earned his law degree at the University of Colorado.

Jon Schnur is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of New Leaders for New Schools. Jon works with the New Leaders for New Schools' team and community to accomplish our mission- driving high levels of leading and achievement for every child by attracting, preparing, and supporting the next generation of outstanding principals for our nation's urban schools. Since co-founding New Leaders for New Schools, he has led the development of the organization's strategy, management team and board, core values, partnerships, and fundraising. Jon has served as Special Assistant to Secretary of Education , President Clinton's White House Associate Director for Educational Policy, and Senior Advisor on Education to Vice President Gore. He has developed national educational policies on teacher and principal quality, after-school programs, district reform, charter schools, and preschools. Jon graduated from Princeton University and a Wisconsin public high school. He lives in New York City with his wife Elisa and their children Matthew and Elizabeth.