Speakers' Bios for Plenary Sessions
Michael Casserly
Michael Casserly has served as Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools since January 1992. Dr. Casserly also served as the organization's Director of Legislation and Research for 15 years before assuming his current position. As head of the urban school group, Dr. Casserly unified big city schools nationwide around a vision of reform and improvement; launched an aggressive research program on trends in urban education; convened the first Education Summit of Big City Mayors and Superintendents; led the nation's largest urban school districts to volunteer for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); led the first national study of common practices among the nation's fastest improving urban school districts; and launched national task forces on achievement gaps, leadership and governance, finance, professional development, and bilingual education. He is currently spearheading efforts to boost academic performance in the nation's big city schools, strengthen management and operations, challenge inequitable state financing systems, and improve the public's image of urban education. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and his B.A. from Villanova University.
Phoebe H. Cottingham
Phoebe Cottingham is Commissioner of Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance at the Institute of Education Sciences and, as such, leads the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) within the Institute. Prior to her IES appointment, Dr. Cottingham worked in philanthropy as Senior Program Officer for Domestic Public Policy at the Smith Richardson Foundation in Westport, CT, and Associate Director of the Equal Opportunity Program at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City. Her work has concerned school reform and early childhood education; initiatives for systematic reviews of evidence; experimental testing of job preparation programs; and research grant programs on employment program effectiveness, immigration trends and policies, and social change in American society. Dr. Cottingham has held teaching and research positions in a number of academic institutions, including the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, and Barnard College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley, her M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania, and her B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University.
Robert C. Granger
Robert Granger is Chair of the National Board for Education Sciences. He is President of the William T. Grant Foundation. Since joining the Foundation in 2000 as Senior Vice President for Programs, Dr. Granger has led the focusing of its grant-making on improving the quality of organizations, programs, and other settings that influence youth; and the implementation of a communication strategy targeting networks of key scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. He is an expert on the content and evaluation of programs and policies for low-income children and youth. Previous positions include Senior Vice President of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), Executive Vice President at Bank Street College of Education, and Executive Director of the Child Development Associate National Credentialing Program. He received his Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts.
Kati Haycock
Kati Haycock is Director of the Education Trust. Established in 1992, the Trust seeks to speak up for what's right for young people, especially those who are poor or members of minority groups. The Trust also provides hands-on assistance to educators who want to work together to improve student achievement, pre-kindergarten through college. Prior to coming to the Education Trust, Ms. Haycock served as Executive Vice President of the Children's Defense Fund, the nation's largest child advocacy organization. A native Californian, Ms. Haycock founded and served as President of The Achievement Council, a statewide organization that provides assistance to teachers and principals in predominately minority schools in improving student achievement. Before that, she served as Director of the Outreach and Student Affirmative Action programs for the nine-campus University of California system.
Edward J. Kame'enui
Edward Kame'enui is Commissioner of Special Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences and, as such, leads the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) within the Institute. He also served in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services of the U.S. Department of Education as a Research Specialist and Project Officer. Dr. Kame'enui came to IES from the University of Oregon, where he had been a faculty member for 17 years and held the Dean Knight Professorship of Special Education. His areas of research expertise and interest include early literacy, vocabulary development, learning disabilities, school-wide models of reading improvement, and the design of high-quality educational materials. Dr. Kame'enui also served on the faculty at the University of Montana and Purdue University. During his academic career, he published over 90 journal articles, 30 book chapters, and 14 textbooks. A native Hawaiian, Dr. Kame'enui is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Oregon and his B.A. from Pacific University.
Marcia C. Linn
Marcia C. Linn is a Professor of Development and Cognition specializing in mathematics, science, and technology education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California-Berkeley. She investigates science teaching and learning, gender equity, and design of learning environments. Her leadership positions include: member of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the Graduate Record Examination Board of the Educational Testing Service, and member of the McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Studies in Education Practice Board. Dr. Linn has received the Outstanding Paper Award from the Journal of Research in Science Teaching (twice), the Willystine Goodsell Award and the Women Educator's Research Award from the American Educational Research Association, the Award for Lifelong Distinguished Contributions to Science Education of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, and the first award in educational research from the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. Dr. Linn is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received a B.A. in Psychology and Statistics and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Stanford University.
Mark McDaniel
Mark McDaniel is a Professor of Psychology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. McDaniel is a co-author of Memory Fitness: A Guide for Successful Aging. Dr. McDaniel's research explores prospective memory, encoding processes in enhancing memory retrieval processes, and mnemonic effects in retrieval. His research on memory function often focuses on factors and processes that lead to memory and learning failures. He has applied this research to examinations of how learning takes place in the classroom. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.
Janet Metcalfe
Janet Metcalfe is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University. Dr. Metcalfe's general area of research is metacognition, evolution of self-reflective consciousness, study time allocation, and judgments of learning. Her current research centers on how people know what they know; that is, their metacognitive abilities, and whether they use this evolutionarily unique ability efficaciously--for effective self-control. Dr. Metcalfe has been studying people's abilities to make judgments of their own learning and investigating what it is that people choose to study. Part of that research is directed at enhancing the study skills of at-risk middle school children. She conducts a cognitively and metacognitively guided study enhancement program at an at-risk school in the Bronx.
Charles Miller
Charles Miller is Chair of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Mr. Miller has been actively and successfully involved in education issues for two decades. As Chairman of the Education Policy Center of Texas, he took the lead in designing the first statewide public school accountability system, which later served as the model for No Child Left Behind federal legislation. As Chairman of the Board of Regents of The University of Texas System, Mr. Miller took the lead toward developing better higher education accountability systems, to be matched with deregulation and institutional autonomy. He also fostered strategies to generate significant increases in research funding, enrollment, patient care, private contributions, and tuition revenues, while increasing financial aid. He has also held advisory positions at Rice University, St. John's College, Texas Southern University, and the University of Houston. Now retired, Mr. Miller was a highly successful portfolio manager for three decades, as well as an entrepreneur in the investment management industry. He was an innovator and a pioneer in the era of professional investment management of institutional assets.
Frederick J. Morrison
Frederick Morrison is a Professor in the School of Education and the Department of Psychology (and Developmental Area Chair) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Morrison's research focuses on the nature and sources of literacy acquisition in children during the transition to school, and he has uncovered surprisingly large individual differences among children in important cognitive, language and social skills even before they begin school. His current work examines the impact of child, family and schooling factors in shaping children's growth and in contributing to early problems in school. In one series of studies, Dr. Morrison is examining the impact of schooling by using a "natural experiment" (school cutoff) in which children who just make versus miss the cutoff for school entry are compared on growth of a variety of skills considered important for school success. In another project, he is a co-investigator on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. This national study has been following over 1,000 children since birth in 10 different sites around the nation, focusing on the relationship between different contexts (family, childcare, school) and children's psychological growth. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Lynn Okagaki
Lynn Okagaki is the Commissioner of Education Research in the Institute of Education Sciences and, as such, leads the National Center for Education Research (NCER) within the Institute. Prior to her current appointment, she served as the Institute's first Deputy Director for Science. In that role, she established the scientifi c peer review procedures for grant application reviews and created the peer review process for Institute reports. Dr. Okagaki was Associate Dean of the School of Consumer and Family Science and professor of Child Development and Family Studies at Purdue University. She has held appointments at Yale University, Cornell University, and the University of Houston. Her research has focused on academic achievement as affected by culture and family values, including minority students' achievement and parenting and school achievement. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University and her B.S. from University of California, Davis.
Hal Pashler
Hal Pashler is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California-San Diego. Dr. Pashler's research interests are in basic cognitive processes and mechanisms (especially as revealed in patterns of dual-task interference), selective attention and visual perception, and human learning and practice effects. He is a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists and the American Psychological Society. Dr. Pashler has received the University of California-San Diego Chancellor's Associates Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, and the Troland Research Award, National Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, his Sc.B. from Brown University, and his A.B. from Brown University.
Mark Schneider
Mark Schneider is the Commissioner of Education Statistics in the Institute of Education Sciences and, as such, leads the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) within the Institute. Dr. Schneider came to the Institute from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he is Distinguished Professor of Political Science. He has written widely in the areas of urban politics and public policy. Schneider has done extensive research connecting school facilities to educational outcomes. His positions of leadership include Vice President of the American Political Science Association, President of the American Political Science Association Public Policy Section, and member of the executive councils of the Midwest Political Science Association and the APSA Urban Section. His book, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools, won the Aaron Wildavsky best book prize from the Policy Studies Organization. His book, The Competitive City, won special recognition by the American Political Science Association's Urban Politics Section. He was also the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Senior Fellowship. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and his B.A. from City University of New York.
Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst
Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst was appointed in 2002 to a six-year term as the first Director of the Institute of Education Sciences—the research, evaluation, and statistics arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The Institute includes the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, the National Center for Education Research, and the National Center for Special Education Research. Dr. Whitehurst previously served as U.S. Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement. Prior to beginning federal service, he was Leading Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. During his academic career, Dr. Whitehurst published five books, and more than 100 research papers on language and reading readiness in children. He developed programs for enhancing children's language development that are widely used in preschool programs in the U.S. and other countries. He received a Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1970.
Chris Whittle
Chris Whittle is an entrepreneur with more than 25 years of leadership experience in the fields of education and publishing. He conceived and founded Edison Schools in 1992, which serves more than 270,000 students in 20 states and two countries. He was founder and Chairman of Whittle Communications. In 1989, Mr. Whittle converted its print businesses to electronic ones, launching Channel One, the first national electronic news system for schools, which today serves 12,000 middle and high schools throughout the United States, providing 8 million students with domestic and international news each morning. Channel One's programming has received a host of awards, including the Peabody Award, one of television journalism's highest accolades. The company was sold to K-III Communications in 1994. Whittle is also former Chairman and Publisher of Esquire magazine.