America’s High Schools: What Works? What’s Next?

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Joel I. Klein (Morning Keynote) became New York City schools chancellor in July 2002 after serving in the highest levels of government and business.  As Chancellor, he oversees more than 1,450 schools with over 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees, and a $15-billion operating budget.  When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed Mr. Klein, a native New Yorker, as the first Chancellor of the newly-reorganized Department of Education, he called the new Chancellor “a true leader who never shies away from the tough and sometimes controversial decisions that are necessary to implement change.”

Mr. Klein’s comprehensive reform program, Children First, is transforming the troubled public school system that existed when the Mayor was elected into a system of great schools.  Student performance is rising, there are increasingly more and better choices for students, schools are safer, and educators are receiving additional autonomy, while being held accountable for progress. 

Highlights of the first four years of the Children First education reforms include:  the end of social promotion in third, fifth, and seventh grades; creation of a wide array of academic supports for struggling students, including an intensive Summer Success Academy; establishment of new supports for parents, including parent coordinators in every school and a Translation and Interpretation Unit; the launch of the Impact Schools initiative to improve school safety; and the expansion of small schools and charter schools to provide additional high-quality educational options for students.

The next phase of Children First will make the entire system even more accountable for student achievement, while expanding the authority of principals to create the learning environment they think is best for their schools.

Before Mr. Klein became Chancellor, he was chairman and chief executive officer of Bertelsmann, Inc., and chief U.S. liaison officer to Bertelsmann AG from January 2001 to July 2002.  Bertelsmann, one of the world’s largest media companies, has annual revenues exceeding $20 billion and employs over 76,000 people in 54 countries. 

From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Klein was assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division.  Serving one of the longest tenures ever as head of the 700-lawyer division, Klein led landmark cases against Microsoft, WorldCom/Sprint, Visa/Mastercard, and General Electric, prevailing in a large majority of cases.  Mr. Klein was widely credited with transforming the antitrust division into one of the Clinton Administration’s greatest successes.  He also served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and as the antitrust division’s principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General.  His appointment to the U.S. Justice Department came after Klein served two years (1993-95) as deputy counsel to President William J. Clinton.

Mr. Klein entered the Clinton administration after 20 years of public and private legal work in Washington, D.C.  He began his career as a law clerk, first to Chief Judge David Bazelon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1973-74), and then to Justice Lewis Powell on the United States Supreme Court (1974-75).  He next worked at a public interest law firm, the Mental Health Law Project (1975-76).  For the following five years, he was an associate and partner at the law firm of Rogovin, Stern & Huge (1976-81).  

Mr. Klein joined two colleagues to start their own law firm, Onek, Klein & Farr, in 1981.  His practice focused heavily on healthcare and constitutional litigation.  He also specialized in appellate advocacy, winning 9 out of 11 cases which he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. This work covered a wide range of substantive areas including antitrust law, health law, civil rights, statutory interpretation, and constitutional law.

Active in community service work, Mr. Klein has participated in Big Brothers, served as chairman of the board of the Green Door, a pioneer community-based treatment program for mentally ill residents of the District of Columbia, and as treasurer of the World Federation for Mental Health.  He was a member of a U.S. Department of State delegation in 1991 to examine issues of psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union.  He has also served on several boards of non-profit organizations such as the National Symphony Orchestra Association.

Mr. Klein has had a long-standing interest in educational issues.  During a leave of absence from law school in 1969, he studied at New York University’s School of Education and later taught math to sixth-graders at a public school in Queens.  Mr. Klein has served as a visiting and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and has published several articles in both scholarly and popular journals.

Mr. Klein was born in New York City on October 25, 1946.  He attended the city’s public schools and graduated from William Cullen Bryant High School.  He then received his BA from Columbia University where he graduated magna cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa in 1967.  Mr. Klein earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1971, again graduating magna cum laude.  He is married to Nicole Seligman.

PANEL 1 PANELISTS:

Andrew J. Rotherham (Moderator) is co-founder and co-director of Education Sector, a national education policy think tank.   He also writes the award-winning blog Eduwonk.com, which an Education Week study cited as among the most influential information sources in education today.  In addition, Rotherham serves on the nine-member Virginia Board of Education, a position he was appointed to by Governor Mark Warner in 2005.  Previously, he served at The White House as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy during the Clinton Administration.

Rotherham is the author of more than 100 articles, book chapters, papers, and op-eds about education policy and politics and is the co-editor of three influential books on educational policy, most recently Collective Bargaining in Education: Negotiating Change in Today’s Schools with Jane Hannaway (Harvard Education Press, 2006).   He serves on advisory boards and committees for a variety of organizations including The Broad Foundation, Harvard University, the National Governors Association, and the National Charter School Research Project.

Rotherham is also a trustee of the Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy and a member of the board of directors for the Indianapolis Mind Trust, and the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Michael Cohen (Panel) is a nationally recognized leader in education policy and standards based reform. He has been the President of Achieve since 2003.  In 2006, Education Week ranked Achieve as the 7th most influential education policy organization in the nation, and ranked Achieve’s landmark report, Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts, as among the most influential research studies in the past decade.

Under Mike’s leadership Achieve formed the American Diploma Project Network, a growing network of states committed to improving preparation for postsecondary education and 21st century careers.  Governors, chief s state school officers, and state higher education and business leaders in these states have committed to align high school standards, curriculum, assessments and accountability with the knowledge and skills high school graduates need for success in postsecondary education and careers.

Mike held several senior education positions in the Clinton Administration, including Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy at the White House, and Senior Advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. He led the Administration’s effort to design, enact and implement Goals 2000, the first substantial federal initiative to support state-led standards-based education reform. He also played an instrumental role in the development of all of the Administration’s K-12 education initiatives.

Earlier in his career, Mike held key positions in several national organizations that work with state education policymakers, including as Director of Education Policy for the National Governors Association, and Director of Policy Development and Planning for the National Association of State Boards of Education. Mike began his career at the National Institute of Education, where he led the Effective Schools research.

Kaya Henderson (Panel), Deputy Chancellor for the District of Columbia Public Schools, focuses on organizational strategy, human capital and external relations.  As she works to create a more effective Human Resources structure for DCPS, Ms. Henderson draws from her past success in leading similar transformations in urban districts such as Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Miami, New York, Oakland, and Philadelphia. 

Prior to her appointment as Deputy Chancellor, Ms. Henderson served as the Vice President for Strategic Partnerships at The New Teacher Project (TNTP), where she oversaw the organization’s work on improving teacher hiring for school districts from a process, policy and capacity-building perspective.  She also launched alternative certification programs--including the DC Teaching Fellows Program--in districts.  Her work contributed to the organization’s two major reports: “Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High-Quality Teachers Out of Urban Classrooms,” and “Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts.” 

Before enacting district-level reforms at The New Teacher Project, Ms. Henderson was impacting teacher hiring and school performance through her work at Teach For America.  She served the organization as a Recruiter, National Director of Admissions, and the Executive Director for Teach For America-D.C., where she was responsible for 170 teachers in over 50 D.C. Public Schools. 

Ms. Henderson’s foundation for education reform came from the classroom.  As a Teach-For-America corps member, she taught middle-school Spanish in the South Bronx, spending her summers overseeing the professional development of new teachers at summer institutes.  She holds a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, where she is also completing a Master’s in Leadership at the McDonough School of Business.  Ms. Henderson lives in the District and is active in local education organizations.

Frederick M. Hess (Panel) is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and executive editor of Education Next.  Rick Hess is a nationally recognized authority on education reform and a frequent speaker and commentator on educational issues including choice, accountability, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, collective bargaining, leadership, federal policy, and teacher quality.

Hess’s many books include The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship (Harvard Education Press, 2008), When Research Matters (Harvard Education Press, 2008), No Remedy Left Behind (AEI Press, 2007), No Child Left Behind: A Primer (Peter Lang, 2006), Educational Entrepreneurship (Harvard Education Press, 2006), Urban School Reform: Lessons from San Diego (Harvard Education Press, 2005), Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Revolution at the Margins (Brookings Institution, 2002), and Spinning Wheels (Brookings Institution, 1998).  His work has appeared in scholarly and more popular outlets including Harvard Educational Review, Urban Affairs Review, Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Teachers College Record, Educational Policy, Education Week, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and National Review.

Hess currently serves on the review board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, the board of directors of StandardsWork, the advisory board for the National Council on Teacher Quality, and the research advisory board for the National Center on Educational Accountability.  He is a former high school social studies teacher, a former professor of education and government at the University of Virginia, and has taught as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.  Hess holds his M.Ed. in teaching and curriculum and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

T. Kenneth James, Ed.D. (Panel), was originally appointed as Commissioner of the Arkansas Department of Education by Governor Mike Huckabee in 2004 and reappointed by Governor Mike Beebe in January, 2007.  Prior to his appointment, he served as the Superintendent of Schools in Fayette County Public Schools (Lexington, Ky.), Little Rock, Ark., Van Buren, Ark. and Batesville, Ark.

James also served as Assistant Superintendent for Educational Services with the Escondido Union High School District in Escondido, California.

James earned a Doctorate in Educational Administration and Supervision from Northern Arizona University and the United States International University in San Diego, California, in 1992.  He received a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration from Northern Arizona University and a Bachelor’s Degree from Arkansas State University.

James began his career in education in 1972 and has served as a classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal, coordinator of planning and assessment and assistant superintendent.  His work in California provided him with experience in schools with large minority student populations.

In 1998, James was selected as the Superintendent of the Year for the State of Arkansas.  He has served as an officer or board member of several professional organizations, including Arkansas Curriculum and Instruction Administrators, Economics America and the Arkansas Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

For the 2008-2009 term, James holds the office of president of the Council of Chief State School Officers and vice chairman of the Southern Regional Education Board of Directors.  He presently serves on the Board of Directors of the Smithsonian Museum Advisory Board and the Regional Education Lab as well.  He also has intimate knowledge about school assessment and curriculum in the state, having served on the ACTAAP Administrative Testing Committee.

Dane Linn (Panel) is the director of the education division at the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices and oversees all education-related policy research, analysis, and resource development.

Recognized as a national expert in his field, Mr. Linn has authored numerous policy reports on issues ranging from school finance to teacher quality and school redesign to pay for performance.  Recently, under the leadership of former Governor Mark Warner of Virginia, Mr. Linn spearheaded the division’s national initiative on Redesigning the American High School.

Prior to his work at NGA, Mr. Linn worked at the West Virginia Department of Education where he was responsible for ensuring the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  Before that, he served as legislative liaison to the House of Delegates. Mr. Linn’s professional experience in education began as an elementary school principal and teacher.

PANEL 2 PANELISTS:

Brian Kelly (Moderator) is the editor of U.S. News & World Report.  As the magazine's editor, he oversees the weekly magazine, the U.S. News Web site, and U.S. News's signature annual education reports, “America's Best Colleges” and “America's Best Graduate Schools,” as well as a series of new business ventures.  He came to the magazine in 1998 as assistant managing editor, supervising domestic news and political coverage and was previously the magazine’s executive editor.

Prior to joining U.S. News, Kelly spent six years at The Washington Post, as congressional editor for coverage of Capitol Hill and political campaigns, and before that, as deputy editor of the Post‘s Sunday opinion section, "Outlook." From 1985 to 1992, he was the editor of Regardie's, a monthly magazine covering business and politics in the Washington, D.C., region.

Kelly is co-author of the recently published The Last Forest (Random House, 2007), which is a sequel to Amazon (1985), a look at the economic and cultural forces behind the clearing of the Amazon rainforest.  In addition, he wrote Adventures in Porkland: How Washington Wastes Your Money and Why They Won't Stop (1993), a study of pork barrel politics on Capitol Hill, and co-authored The Four Little Dragons (1999), an exploration of the developing economies of Asia.  Kelly holds a bachelor's in economics from Georgetown University.

Stephen C. Jones, Ed.D (Panel),assumed the position of Superintendent of Norfolk Public Schools in July, 2005, with a proven record of leadership experience and more than 35 years working in various aspects of public education,. Norfolk Public Schools serves nearly 35,000 students PreK-12 in 49 schools and 15 auxiliary facilities including early childhood, hospital, alternative and career centers.

From 1999-2005, Dr. Jones served as Superintendent of the Syracuse City School District, one of the Big 5 school districts in New York State. Among his many accomplishments, he successfully reorganized the administrative functions of the district, restructured the delivery of instructional services to students, expanded universal prekindergarten, revamped middle-level instruction, and established significant partnerships with institutions of higher learning as well as with the faith-based community.

Immediately preceding the position in Syracuse, Dr. Jones was the Executive Director of Community of Caring, Inc., a comprehensive K-12 values education and teenage pregnancy prevention program, which is a project of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation in Washington, D.C.

From 1992-1998, Dr. Jones led, at the Area and Associate Superintendent level, virtually every aspect of the Baltimore County Public Schools, the 25th largest school system in the United States with 160 schools serving over 106,000 students. Prior to 1992, Dr. Jones worked in a variety of increasingly responsible positions in the Baltimore County Public Schools, including: Northeast Area Superintendent of Schools, Coordinator of Minority Education, Middle School Principal, and High School Assistant Principal. He began his career in Baltimore in 1970 as a social studies teacher.

Since arriving in Norfolk, Dr. Jones has concentrated on moving the district forward on its journey to reach world-class status by 2010. Recent data reveal that the district has made significant progress in narrowing achievement gaps while increasing academic proficiency for all. In 2005, Norfolk Public Schools won the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education. Today, Dr. Jones is overseeing the implementation of a districtwide Strategic Plan designed to guide Norfolk Public Schools’ journey to world class over the next five years.

Dr. Jones’ collaborative leadership style has earned him tremendous allegiance from all stakeholders. He has developed and expanded upon positive relationships within the community, especially with parents, business, government, and religious leaders. Most recently, he led the effort to create the Norfolk Public Schools Educational Foundation, a vehicle to assist in providing the necessary resources to support the district’s strategic plan and world-class mission.

Dr. Jones has received numerous awards including the 2001 School District Leadership Award from the Congressional Black Caucus, the Distinguished Educator of the Year for 1998 from the Fullwood Foundation, the 1997 Outstanding Leadership in Education Award from the Baltimore County Alliance of Black School Educators, and the Administrator of the Year from Maryland State Teachers Association.
Most recently, in recognition of his educational experience and accomplishments, the Honorable Timothy Kaine, Governor, appointed Dr. Jones to the StartStrong Commission on Early Childhood Education. The Commission is charged with overseeing the development of expanded access to quality preschool for four-year-olds across the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Dr. Jones currently serves on the boards of several local organizations including WHRO, Nauticus, the Governor’s School for the Arts, ACCESS College Foundation, Square One, and more.  Additionally, he is an active member of many professional and community organizations including the Council of Great City Schools, American Association of School Administrators, Hampton Roads 200+ Men, Inc., Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, and Old Dominion University’s Community Development Corporation.

William A. Swope (Panel) is corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's Corporate Affairs Group and is responsible for ensuring Intel's continued focus on corporate social responsibility as an integral part of Intel's corporate strategy.  In this role, he leads the company's global education and citizenship programs, as well as its community and corporate contribution activities and the Intel Foundation. His team is charged with driving policy, education, and community agendas that effect positive change around the world.

Since joining Intel in 1979, Swope has held numerous roles including manufacturing technology planning, strategic product planning and product management.  Swope was director of Digital Enterprise Brand Management, and prior to that he was general manager of the Software and Solutions Group (SSG), reporting to the president and chief operating officer of Intel.  In that capacity he managed the software products and enabling efforts within SSG.  From 1993 to 1995, Swope was the general manager of the Intel® Pentium® Pro processor team. Swope was promoted to vice president in 1996 and corporate vice president in 2003.

Inspired by Intel's commitment to corporate social responsibility, Swope is honored to be the steward of the company's 40-year legacy of support for education, environment and the community.  His responsibilities span from the Intel Foundation to Intel's global education programs to its Volunteer Matching Grants and the Intel Involved employee volunteerism programs.  Swope is also a frequent keynote speaker at global forums such as the World Economic Forum, eLearning Africa, and the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development.

Swope received his bachelor's degree in applied physics from Tufts College.  He earned his master's degree in management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Swope serves on the board of directors for Rim Semiconductor, Inc.