| Board of Directors Paul
E. Almeida
Paul Almeida is president of the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees (DPE)
and immediate past president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical
Engineers (IFPTE), a 50,000-member union composed of both American and Canadian workers in
professional, technical, administrative, and associated occupations. Almeida also serves
on a number of AFL-CIO policy committees—including those on health care, education
and training, legislation, immigration, organizing, social policy, strategic approaches,
and women workers. He is a member of The Task Force on Workforce Development, a
joint project of the Albert Shanker Institute and the New Economy Information Service.
Barbara Byrd-Bennett
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, executive-in-residence at Cleveland State
University's College of Education and Human Services, is a former chief executive officer of the Cleveland
Municipal School
District and an experienced educator, administrator, and authority on urban education. She
began her education career in the New York City schools, where she served as an
elementary, middle, and high school teacher, school principal, and director of curriculum
& instruction and professional development. She has also been an adjunct professor at
Malcolm King College in Harlem, New York’s City College, the College of New Rochelle,
and Fordham University. Before coming to Cleveland in 1998, Byrd-Bennett served as
supervising superintendent for New York City’s Chancellor’s District, and as superintendent for the Crown Heights district in
Brooklyn.
Landon Butler
Butler is president of Landon Butler & Company,
an institutional investor relations firm
and serves on the policy board of the Multi-Employer Property Trust, a
nationwide real estate equity fund that he helped to organize in 1981.
He is also a principal of a series of specialty real estate funds, three
venture capital funds that invest in Central Europe and East Asia, and a
money management firm. Previously Butler served as deputy chief of staff
and deputy assistant to the President in the Carter White House from
1977 to 1981, where he coordinated the ratification of the Panama Canal
Treaty and SALT II Treaty and served as a liaison with the labor
movement. As a real estate investor, he actively engaged
in partnerships with unions aimed at promoting union-built projects. He
took that same philosophy to post-communist Poland, where he worked with
activists from Poland’s Solidarity trade union to support construction
and aid the economy. Butler was honored in 2007 by
the Labor Heritage Foundation for his contributions to the labor
movement. He serves on the Shakespeare Theatre Company Board of Trustees
and on the Board of Directors of the Black Student Fund and In2Books. He
has also been a member of the Executive Board of the U.S. Committee on
NATO.
David K. Cohen
David Cohen is John Dewey collegiate professor of education and professor of public policy
at the University of Michigan. His current research interests focus on education policy,
the influence of policy on instruction, and the nature of teaching practice. His past work
includes studies of the effects of schooling, school and teaching reform, evaluations of
education experiments and intervention programs, and examinations of the relationship
between research and policy. Included among his many previous roles are: consultant to the
general counsel of the NAACP on schools and race (1964-66); director, Race and Education
Project, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1966-67); professor of education and social
policy, Harvard Graduate School of Education (1971-86); and president, The Huron Institute
(1971-86). He is an expert on merit pay for teachers, both public and private school
choice, and the relationship of student curriculum to teacher professional development.
Antonia Cortese
Toni Cortese, secretary-treasurer of the
American Federation of Teachers, served as AFT executive vice president
from 2004 to 2008. She is a former officer of the New York
State United Teachers (NYSUT), elected NYSUT second vice
president in 1973, a position she held until 1985, when she was elected
first vice president. Among her many professional activities,
Cortese has served on the executive committee and as a member of the
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which develops and
administers assessments leading to the certification of accomplished
teachers. She has served as an appointee of the U.S. Department of
Education to the National Assessment Governing Board which is
responsible for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
A vice president of the national AFT for many years, she also serves as
an AFT representative to the Learning First Alliance, a national
coalition of major education organizations
Rudolph F. Crew
Superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools
since 2004 and former chancellor of the New York City Public Schools,
Rudy Crew is a lifelong educator who has made it a mission to improve
student achievement, especially for poor and minority students. To that
end, he worked closely with AFT affiliates, first in New York and then
in Miami, to place those cities’ lowest-performing schools in virtual
districts whose boundaries were defined by student need, not geography.
New York’s "Chancellor’s District" schools and Miami’s "School
Improvement Zone" schools both utilized research-based practices
that help accelerate the pace of student learning. Crew serves on numerous boards, including the Lincoln
Center for the Performing Arts, and the Washington Association of Black
School Educators, and is the recipient of many awards, including the
NAACP Educational Leadership Award, the Arthur Ashe Leadership Award,
and the Association of California School Administrators’ ‘Administrator
of the Year’ Award.
Thomas R.
Donahue
Thomas R. Donahue served as secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO from 1979 to 1995 and
AFL-CIO president in 1995. From 1967 to 1969, he was Assistant Secretary for
Labor-Management Relations at the U.S. Department of Labor. He was executive secretary and
first vice president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) from 1969 to
l973, and from 1973 to 1979 was an executive assistant to then-AFL-CIO president George
Meany. Currently, Donahue serves as the chairman of the State Department’s Advisory
Committee on Labor Diplomacy. He is a member of the board of directors of the National
Endowment for Democracy, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute for
Multi-Track Diplomacy. He is also vice president of the Muscular Dystrophy
Association, and a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
Bob Edwards
Bob Edwards, host of a talk show on
satellite radio channel XM 133, was the founding host
of National Public Radio’s daily radio newsmagazine Morning Edition. Under his almost 25 years
of leadership, Morning Edition became the most popular program on public radio,
boasting 13 million listeners each week. Over its long history, Edwards and Morning
Edition earned many accolades, most recently a 1999 George Foster Peabody Award, which
described him as “a man who embodies the essence of excellence in radio.” A native of Louisville, Kentucky, Edwards earned a
bachelor's degree from the University of Louisville and began his career at a small radio
station in New Albany, Indiana. Edwards also serves as a national vice president of AFTRA,
the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Carl Gershman
Carl Gershman is
president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a private,
congressionally supported grant-making institution with the mission to
strengthen democratic
nongovernmental
institutions
around the world. He presides over NED's grants programs in Africa,
Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and
Latin America, and has overseen the creation of the quarterly Journal
of Democracy, International Forum for Democratic Studies, and the
Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program. He took the lead in launching
the World Movement for Democracy. Previously, Gershman was senior
counselor to the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, a resident
scholar at Freedom House and executive director of Social Democrats,
USA. He has lectured extensively, has published numerous articles, is
co-editor of Israel, the Arabs and the Middle East, and the
author of The Foreign Policy of the American Labor. He has also
received a number of U.S. and international awards.Milton Goldberg
Milton Goldberg is a distinguished educator who previously served as director of the
Office of Research for the U.S. Department of Education where he helped develop the
National Goals that were adopted by the bipartisan 1989 Education Summit. Goldberg also
served as executive director of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which
in 1983 issued the landmark report A Nation at Risk. His board, working group, and
task force memberships included the Business Roundtable, the National Council on Economic
Education, the Education Commission of the States, and the National Research Council.
Ernest G. Green
Currently managing director of public finance for Lehman Brothers in Washington, D.C.,
Ernest Green has handled such key Lehman clients as the city and state of New York, the
city of Atlanta, the state of Connecticut, and the Washington Metropolitan Airport
Authority. Green's career also spans labor concerns, beginning in New York City in the
late 1960s when he worked with Bayard Rustin in founding the Recruitment and Training
Program, a project to help integrate apprenticeship programs in the building trades. He
subsequently served as assistant secretary of labor for employment and training in the
Carter Administration. The courage and drama of his 1957 struggle to integrate Central
High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of the "Little Rock Nine" was
captured by the PBS documentary, "The Ernest Green Story."
E. D. Hirsch Jr.
E.D. Hirsch, emeritus professor of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, is
the author of numerous books, including the best-seller Cultural Literacy; his more
recent work, The Knowledge Deficit; The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them; and a
preschool
through sixth-grade series beginning with What Your Preschooler Needs to Know.
Hirsch is founder and chairman of the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, which has helped reshape the
curriculum in hundreds of schools around the country. He has been elected to the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Education, and is the
recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the AFT's 1997 QuEST award.
Sol Hurwitz
Sol Hurwitz is immediate past president and an honorary trustee of the Committee for
Economic Development (CED), a private, nonprofit research and policy organization of 250
business leaders and educators. During his tenure at CED, Hurwitz was the chief architect
of the organization's education reform programs. He had principal responsibility
for: Investing in Our Children: Business and the Public Schools, and Children in
Need: Investment Strategies for the Educationally Disadvantaged, among other reports
and projects. He has contributed articles on business, education, and other subjects to The
New York Times, Barron's, the Christian Science Monitor, and Harvard
Magazine, and in 1995 accepted the AFT's QuEST award on CED's behalf.
Clifford
B. Janey
Clifford Janey, currently the state district superintendent for the
Newark Public Schools, is the former superintendent of schools for the District
of Columbia. He previously served as vice president for education at
Scholastic, Inc. where he worked closely with state education
departments and national school reform organizations to help develop and
implement strategies for improving student achievement and coordinated
partnerships with urban school districts. Janey served as superintendent
of schools in Rochester, NY where he led the implementation of
Rochester's Performance Benchmarks and Public Engagement Plan and
instituted a high performing national recognized pre-kindergarten
program. Janey also has held a number of positions in Boston, MA which
included chief academic officer, east zone superintendent (K-8),
principal of Theodore Roosevelt Middle School, and reading teacher at
the Bancroft School. He has also served as director of Black Studies at
Northeastern University.
Ted Kirsch
Ted Kirsch, former president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers,
was elected
in
2007
to
his second two-year term as president of AFT
Pennsylvania. He is a member of the AFT Executive Council, chairs the
AFT's Defense Committee, chairs the AFT Militancy Committee and has been
a member of the AFT Political Council AFL-CIO and is vice president of
the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. Kirsch began his career teaching junior high
school social studies and has taught courses on labor history,
collective bargaining and theory of the labor movement at Pennsylvania
State University. Kirsch has received dozens of awards from community,
educational, and humanitarian organizations and has served on the boards
of the United Way, Jewish Community Relations Council, National Israel
Bonds, the World Affairs Council.
Nat LaCour
Nat LaCour is secretary-treasurer emeritus of the American
Federation of Teachers and former president of the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), one
of the few local teacher unions in the South to win collective bargaining rights. As UTNO
president, LaCour was recognized as a leading advocate in the struggle to create an
integrated, unified teacher union movement. Throughout his long tenure as an AFT leader, LaCour
has acted as a key advisor on professional, union, and minority issues. He is also a
member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, a commissioner of the
White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, and a national board member of both the
A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. He was recently
elected to the AFL-CIO's Executive Council.
Stanley S. Litow
Vice president of corporate community relations at IBM, Stanley Litow is also
president of the IBM International Foundation, which has been called "one of the
nation's largest corporate philanthropic programs" extending to more than 100
countries abroad. In 1996 and 1999, Litow assisted IBM's CEO, Louis V. Gerstner, in
planning and overseeing the two national educational summits that were hosted by IBM.
Prior to joining IBM, Litow served as deputy chancellor for operations and chief operating
officer of New York City Public Schools; president of Interface, a not-for-profit think
tank; and a governor-appointed member of New York State's Industrial Cooperation Council,
its Job Training Partnership Council, and the state's School and Business Alliance. He is
the recipient of awards from the Anne Frank Center, the Martin Luther King Commission, and
Manhattanville College.
Michael Maccoby
Michael Maccoby is president of The Maccoby Group in Washington, D.C.,
and director of the Project on Technology, Work and Character, a
non-profit research organization. Maccoby has been a consultant to
leaders in many corporations, unions, universities, the World Bank, and
the U.S. State and Commerce Departments. He has advised CEOs of major
companies in Sweden, Norway and Finland as well as the U.S. Maccoby was
facilitator of the National Leadership Commission on Health Care Reform.
He has published a number of books on leadership, including The
Gamesman, The Leader and Why Work? Motivating the New Work Force.
He has also published a number of articles in the Harvard Business
Review. He has taught at a number of universities, including
Harvard, the University of Chicago, Cornell, and the Washington School
of Psychiatry. He is also the former director of the Program on
Technology, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard's John F.
Kennedy School of Government.
Herb Magidson
A former vice president of the American Federation of Teachers for 20 years, Herb Magidson
began union work as a high school chapter chairman in the United Federation of Teachers in
New York City. In 1969, he moved on to become an assistant to the then UFT
president, Albert
Shanker. Since that time, his union career has spanned officerships of the New York State
United Teachers, the New York State AFL-CIO, and pension and health insurance plans
servicing union members. As a member of the AFT Executive Council, her
served as chairman of the AFT's "Futures II"
Committee, the AFT Democracy Committee, and the AFT Committee on Political
Education.
Edward J. McElroy
Edward McElroy, president emeritus of the American Federation of
Teachers, served as AFT president from 2004 to 2008 after serving 12
years as AFT secretary-treasurer. He first became an AFT vice president
in
1974, the same year Albert Shanker became the union's president. First as president of the
Warwick Teachers Union and later as a state president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, he has
been a leader in cementing teacher union ties to others within the labor movement. Having
served as Al Shanker's right hand during the 1990s, McElroy is also an expert on
educational and health care issues, as well as the fundamentals of labor organization and
finance. He sits on numerous boards, councils and committees, among them the
AFL-CIO's Executive Council. He is Chairman of the General Board of the AFL-CIO's
Department of Professional Employees.
Susan Moore Johnson
Susan Moore Johnson is director and principal
investigator of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers and Carl
H. Pforzheimer, Jr. professor of
teaching and learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Johnson teaches and studies teacher policy,
organizational change, and administrative practice. A former high school
teacher and administrator, she has a continuing research interest in the
work of teachers and the reform of schools. She has studied the
leadership of superintendents, the effects of collective bargaining on
schools, the use of incentive pay plans for teachers, and the school as
a context for adult work. From 1993-1999, Johnson served as academic
dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of
many published articles and four books: Teacher Unions in Schools,
Teachers at Work, Leading to Change: The Challenge of the New
Superintendency, and
Finders and Keepers: Helping New Teachers Survive and
Thrive in Our Schools. Johnson is a member
of the National Academy of Education.
Stephanie Powers
Stephanie Powers is the project director for the Council
on Foundations’ National Fund for Workforce Solutions. The Council on
Foundations (COF) is the leadership partner of the National Fund, which
provides financial support and technical assistance to promising
workforce development partnerships around the country. The goal of the
fund’s efforts is to improve employment, training, and labor market
outcomes for low-income individuals. Prior to joining COF, Powers
provided executive leadership for the National Apartment Association’s
Education Institute and the National Association of Workforce Boards. She was the Clinton Administration’s director of the
National School to Work Office in the U.S. Departments of Labor and
Education from 1998 – 2001, and prior to that held positions in the
Employment and Training Administration as chief of staff to the
assistant secretary and director of communications and public
information. In the late 1980s, Powers managed statewide federal
demonstration projects at the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on
Disability, specifically school to work transition for students with
disabilities and special education reform projects in partnership with
the NH State Department of Education and many public schools.
Diane Ravitch
Diane Ravitch is senior research scholar at New York University, senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and
senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. She served as assistant secretary of
education (head of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement) and counselor to
the secretary of education from 1991 to 1993. Her lectures on democracy and civic
education in countries like the Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, Poland,
Romania, Slovakia, and many of the nations that constituted the former Soviet Union have
been translated into many languages by the United States Information Agency. In 1989 she
became an advisor to Poland's Teachers Solidarity trade union, and in 1991 was awarded a
medal by the Polish government for her work on behalf of the Solidarity trade union. Among
her other works, she is author of National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's
Guide 1995, and The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980, and
co-editor of The Democracy Reader.
Richard Riley
As a two-term governor of South Carolina in the 1980s, Richard Riley won
national recognition for his successful education improvements. In 1992,
President Clinton named him as the nation's chief education officer. As
Secretary of Education, Riley helped launch historic initiatives to
raise academic standards; improve instruction for the poor and
disadvantaged; expand the teaching force; expand grant and loan programs
to help more Americans go to college; prepare young people for the world
of work; and improve teaching. Since leaving his national post in
January 2001, Riley has rejoined the law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley &
Scarborough with offices throughout South Carolina , as well as in
Atlanta , Charlotte and Munich . He also has been appointed
Distinguished Professor at his alma mater, Furman University, where he
serves as Advisory Board Chair of the Richard W. Riley Institute of
Government, Politics, and Public Leadership. Additionally, Riley has
been named Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina
and Distinguished Senior Fellow at NAFSA: Association of International
Educators.
William E. Scheuerman
William Scheuerman became
president of the National Labor College on October 7, 2007. Prior to
holding this position, Scheuerman served since 1993 as president of the
United University Professions (UUP), the largest public higher education
union in the nation, representing 33,000 academic and professional
faculty, and an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. In
July 2006, Scheuerman became the first AFT officer from higher education
to serve on AFT's Executive Committee. Scheuerman is the author of
numerous scholarly works including two books--The Steel Crisis,
in 1986, and Private Interests, Public Spending with Sid Plotkin,
in 1994, which examined the political origins of the fiscal crisis and
organized labor's response. He serves on the boards of several public
interest organizations and is a member of the editorial boards for AFT's
American Academic journal and the journal Working USA.
William H. Schmidt
Bill Schmidt is university distinguished
professor at Michigan State University (MSU), co-director of its
Education Policy Center, co-director of its US-China Center for
Research, co-director of the NSF PROM/SE project, and the director or
former director of the centers overseeing U.S. participation in the
Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and its
follow-on studies. A past chairman of the Department of Educational
Psychology and former acting dean for planning and evaluation in MSU’s
College of Education, he was also head of the Office of Policy Studies
and Program Assessment for the National Science Foundation. The author
and co-author of numerous articles, chapters, papers and books,
including Why Schools Matter, Dr. Schmidt’s current writing and
research focuses on issues of academic content in K-12 schooling,
assessment theory, and the effects of curriculum on academic
achievement. He also studies educational policy related to mathematics
and science, and testing in general.
Randi Weingarten
Randi Weingarten, elected
president of the American Federation of Teachers in 2008, has been
president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents
more than 140,000 active and retired educators in the New York City
public school system, since 1998. She is also a board member of New York
State United Teachers (NYSUT) and a member of the AFT Executive
Committee. A vice president of the New York City Central Labor Council
of the AFL-CIO, she heads the city Municipal Labor Committee, an
umbrella organization for some 100 city employee unions. Weingarten
serves on a number of boards, including the New York Committee on
Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH); the Anti-Defamation League, New
York Region; the United Way of Greater New York; The International
Rescue Committee; and the newly formed Math for America. She is also on
the advisory boards of Operation Public Education at the University of
Pennsylvania and the Haan Foundation for Children.
Deborah L. Wince-Smith
Deborah L. Wince-Smith is president of the Council on Competitiveness.
An internationally recognized expert on science and technology policy,
innovation strategy, and global competition, she serves as a member of
the Oversight Board of the Internal Revenue Service, as a member of the
Board of Directors of the NASDAQ Stock Market, and a chairman of the
Secretary of Commerce's Strengthening America's Communities Initiative
Federal Advisory Committee. Wince-Smith served as the first assistant
secretary for technology policy in the Department of Commerce Technology
Administration from 1989 to 1993. During the Reagan Administration, she
served as the assistant director for international affairs and
competitiveness in the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy.
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