Kenneth Howe, Professor, School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder

Kenneth R. Howe is professor in the Educational Foundations, Policy, and Practice program area, and director of the Education and the Public Interest Center. He specializes in education policy, professional ethics, and philosophy of education, and has conducted research on a variety of topics, ranging from the quantitative/qualitative debate to a philosophical examination of constructivism to a defense of multicultural education. His current research is focused on education policy analysis, particularly school choice. His books include Ethics of Special Education (with Ofelia Miramontes), Understanding Equal Education: Social Justice, Democracy and Schooling, Values in Evaluation and Social Research (with Ernest House), and Closing Methodological Divides: Toward Democratic Educational Research. Howe teaches courses in the social foundations of education, the philosophy of education, and philosophical issues in educational research.

Angela Valenzuela, Associate Vice President for Educational Equity, Division of Diversity and Community Engagement and Director, Texas Center for Education Policy and The National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project

Angela Valenzuela is a professor in the Educational Policy and Planning Program in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas at Austin and holds a courtesy appointment in Cultural Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.  Valenzuela's research and teaching interests are in the sociology of education, minority youth in schools, educational policy, and urban education reform.


A Stanford University graduate, her previous teaching positions were in sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas (1990-98), as well as a visiting scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston (1998-99). She is also the author of Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring and Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" Accountability Fails Latino Youth. She also founded and operates an education blog titled, Educational Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas.


She served as co-editor of the Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, as well as the Anthropology and Education Quarterly.  A Fulbright Scholar, Valenzuela spent her 2007-08 academic year in Mexico where she taught in the College of Law at the University of Guanajuato in Guanajuato, Guanajuato and conducted research in the areas of immigration, human rights, and binational relations.

Valenzuela currently serves as associate vice president for Educational Equity at the University of Texas at Austin located in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement.  Within her portfolio, she directs both the Texas Center for Education Policy and the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) that aims to create a teacher education pipeline for Latino/a youth, nationally. With support from both the Ford Foundation and the Kellogg Foundation, this work builds on the efforts and advocacy of Latino/a education and business leaders nationwide.

Joel Westheimer, University research chair in democracy and education at the University of Ottawa and education columnist for CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning show

Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Democracy and Education and professor in the social foundations of education at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and his B.S.E. from Princeton University. Westheimer teaches and writes on democracy, social justice, youth activism, service learning, and community. He is author of the 1998 book Among Schoolteachers (Teachers College Press). His recent book, Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America's Schools (foreword by the late Howard Zinn), has won numerous awards. A former musician, Westheimer grew up and spent most of his life in New York City where he was also a public school teacher. He lectures nationally and internationally on democracy and education, service learning, and academic freedom and addresses radio and television audiences on shows such as Good Morning America, More to Life, Ontario Today, Ottawa Morning, CBC, NBC and NPR News. He is currently working on his third book, Restoring the Public in Public Education and was the recent recipient of the Canadian Education Association's Whitworth Award "for education research that matters." Westheimer lives with his wife and two children in Ottawa, Ontario, where, in winter, he ice skates to and from work.

Kati Haycock, Founder, The Education Trust

One of the nation’s leading advocates in the field of education, Kati Haycock founded The Education Trust to promote the high academic achievement of all students, pre-kindergarten through college. In particular, the organization seeks to close the gaps in opportunity and achievement that consign too many low-income students and students of color to lives on the margins of the American mainstream.

Before leading Ed Trust, Haycock served as executive vice president of the Children's Defense Fund, the nation's largest child advocacy organization. Earlier, she was founding president of The Achievement Council, a California organization that assisted teachers and principals at predominantly minority schools in improving student achievement. She also served as director of outreach and student affirmative action programs for the nine-campus University of California system.

Haycock speaks about educational improvement before thousands of educators, community and business leaders, and policymakers each year. A native Californian, she has received numerous awards for her service to our nation’s youth, and serves as a director on several education-related boards, including those of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, The New Teacher Project, and the Hunt Institute.

John H. Jackson, President and CEO, Schott Foundation for Public Education

On July 2, 2007, John H. Jackson became the President and CEO of The Schott Foundation for Public Education.  In this role, Jackson leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a high quality public education for all students regardless of race or gender. He joined the Schott Foundation after seven productive years in leadership positions at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He served as the NAACP Chief Policy Officer and prior to that as the NAACP's National Director of Education.

Jackson also served as an adjunct professor of Race, Gender, and Public Policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.  In 1999, President Clinton appointed Jackson to serve in his administration as senior policy advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education.

Jackson earned his B.A. in Political Science from Xavier University of Louisiana; a master of education in Education Policy from the University of Illinois College of Education; and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois College of Law. In addition, he received a master of education and doctorate of education in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Jackson served on the Obama-Biden transition team as a member of the President’s 13-member Education Policy Transition Work Group.

Kevin Kumashiro, Professor of Asian American Studies and Education, University of Illinois at Chicago

Kevin Kumashiro is professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was formerly chair of the Department of Educational Policy Studies, interim co-director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, and coordinator of Asian American Studies.  He is the primary investigator and director of the UIC AANAPISI Initiative, funded by $4 million in U.S. Department of Education grants to support Asian American and Pacific Islander students in higher education.  He has taught in schools and universities across the United States and abroad, and has consulted for school districts, organizations, and state and federal agencies.  He is the award-winning author of eight books on education and activism, including Troubling Education, which received the 2003 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award; Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning toward Social Justice; and most recently, Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture. He is the founding director of the Center for Anti-Oppressive Education, and the president-elect of the National Association for Multicultural Education.

Pedro Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development and Executive Director, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, New York University

Pedro Noguera, the Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University, is a sociologist whose scholarship and research focuses on the ways in which schools are influenced by social and economic conditions and the factors that obstruct and promote student achievement. He holds tenured faculty appointments in the departments of Teaching and Learning and Humanities and Social Sciences at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at NYU. Noguera is also the executive director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the co-director of the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS). In 2008, he was appointed by the governor of New York to serve on the State University of New York Board of Trustees.
 
Noguera received his bachelors’ degree in sociology and history and a teaching credential from Brown University in 1981. He earned his master's degree in sociology from Brown in 1982 and received his doctorate in sociology from UC Berkeley in 1989. Noguera was a classroom teacher in public schools in Providence, Rhode Island, and Oakland, California. He has held tenured faculty appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (2000-2003), where he served as the Judith K. Dimon Professor of Communities and Schools, and at the University of California, Berkeley (1990-2000), where he was also the director of the Institute for the Study of Social Change.  Noguera has published more than 150 research articles, monographs and research reports on topics such as urban school reform, conditions that promote student achievement, youth violence, the role of education in community development in national and international contexts, and race and ethnic relations in American society. He is the author of several books, including The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada (Peter Lang Publishers, 1997), City Schools and the American Dream (Teachers College Press, 2003), Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in Our Nation’s Schools (Josey Bass, 2006), The Trouble With Black Boys…and Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education (Wiley and Sons, 2008), Creating the Opportunity to Learn with Dr. A. Wade Boykin (ASCD, 2011) and Invisible No More: Understanding and Responding to the Disenfranchisement of Latino Males with Aida Hurtado and Edward Fergus (Routledge, 2011).  Noguera appears as a regular commentator on educational issues and other topics on CNN, National Public Radio, and other national news outlets.