Speaker Biographies
November 14, 2005

John E. Chubb is founding partner, executive vice president, and chief education officer of Edison Schools. He is also a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Since 1984, he has been a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he has authored numerous studies. His books include Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child; Bridging the Achievement Gap with Tom Loveless; and A Lesson in School Reform from Great Britain and Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, both coauthored with Terry Moe. He has taught at Stanford University, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University and served as a consultant for the White House, many state governments, school systems, and nonprofit organizations.

Larry Cuban is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University. A former urban high school teacher, administrator, and superintendent, Mr. Cuban spent twenty-five years in public schools before becoming a professor and researcher at Stanford. His most recent books are: The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can't Be Businesses and Why Is It So Hard To Get Good Schools?.

April Gresham Maranto is a researcher, mother, and volunteer. She coedited School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools, with her husband Robert Maranto, and her work has appeared in journals including Phi Delta Kappan, Family Law Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Psychology, Social Behavior and Psychology, and the Journal of Traumatic Stress Studies. She has previously taught at Lafayette College, Furman University, and the University of Minnesota.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and executive editor of Education Next. His books include Common Sense School Reform; Revolution at the Margins; Spinning Wheels; Leaving No Child Behind?; Urban School Reform: Lessons from San Diego; and most recently, With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education. Mr. Hess serves as advisor to the Ash Institute at Harvard University and on various boards, including the Broad Prize in Urban Education and the National Center for Educational Accountability. His articles have appeared in Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Quarterly, Educational Leadership, Journal of Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week, and American School Board Journal. He formerly taught high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Henry "Hank" M. Levin is the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and the David Jacks Professor of Education and Economics, emeritus, at Stanford University. He is also the director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. From 1986-2000, Mr. Levin served as director of the Accelerated Schools Project, a national school reform initiative for accelerating the education of at-risk youth. He specializes in the economics of education and human resources and has published twenty books and nearly 300 articles on these subjects. His most recent books are Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Methods and Cases, Privatizing Education, and Readings in the Economics of Higher Education.

Robert Maranto teaches political science and public administration at Villanova University, and he previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania, James Madison University, and Southern Mississippi University. Mr. Maranto has done extensive research on political appointees in government, civil service reform, and school reform, producing more than forty scholarly publications. His op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, and Hartford Courant. Mr. Maranto and his wife, April Gresham Maranto, coedited School Choice in the Real World: Lessons from Arizona Charter Schools. He also wrote Beyond a Government of Strangers and coedited two forthcoming books, Charter Schools and Educational Reform and The Second Term of George W. Bush: Prospects and Perils.

Patrick McGuinn is assistant professor of political science at Drew University. He was previously a visiting assistant professor at Colby College, a postdoctoral fellow at the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University, and a predoctoral fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia. His work on education policy has been published in Publius: The Journal of Federalism, The Public Interest, Teachers College Record, and Educational Policy, and his book Educating Politics: No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal School Policy, 1965-2005, will be published by the University Press of Kansas in spring 2006. Mr. McGuinn is a former high school teacher.

Alex Molnar is professor of education policy and director of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University. From 1971 to 2001, he taught at the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He previously served as chief of staff for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's Urban Initiative, a project that resulted in the creation of the state’s Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program. Mr. Molnar’s work has appeared in newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Education Week, in addition to scholarly journals like Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Phi Delta Kappan, and Educational Leadership. His most recent books are School Commercialism: From Democratic Ideal to Market Commodity; Giving Kids the Business: The Commercialization of America's Schools; and Vouchers, Class Size Reduction, and Student Achievement.

Adam Newman is vice president for research and client services at Eduventures, an organization he joined in 1999. There, he oversees the direction and operations of the company's research and advisory practices. He has worked on a wide range of research projects and growth-oriented advisory engagements for K-12, postsecondary, and corporate clients. His published research includes Closing the Equity Gap: Addressing NCLB Compliance with Access Infrastructure Software, What Can Virtual Learning Do For Your School?, Tuition Assistance Plan Benchmark: Managing TAP as a Strategic Asset, and Charting the Course: Postsecondary E-Learning Providers Respond to New Market Conditions. Before joining Eduventures, he was senior manager at the Corporate Executive Board, a membership-based research organization delivering best practices analysis to Global 2000 companies. He has also taught and coached in middle and secondary schools.

Julie Petersen is communications and special projects manager at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she oversees publications strategy and writes and edits newsletters, research papers, and articles in support of the fund’s network and intellectual capital development. Before joining NewSchools, Ms. Petersen spent three years as a writer at Red Herring Magazine, a business and technology magazine, where she covered venture capital as well as a range of other beats, including education, entrepreneurs, and startups. In 2001, she was named one of the "30 Under 30" business journalists in the country by TJFR for her online and print writing at Red Herring.

Kim Smith is cofounder and executive chairman of NewSchools Venture Fund, which she established in 1998 to transform public education by supporting education entrepreneurs. She began her career as a business-education consultant, later becoming a founding team member of Teach For America, and founding director of BAYAC AmeriCorps, a consortium of nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also held marketing positions with Silicon Graphics’ Education Industry Group, where she focused on online learning. In 2001, Ms. Smith was featured in Newsweek’s report on the "Women of the 21st Century" as "the kind of woman who will shape America’s new century." She is a member of the 2002 Class of Henry Crown Fellows of the Aspen Institute and serves on numerous advisory boards.

Paul Teske is professor of public affairs and director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the University of Colorado's Graduate School of Public Affairs. He previously was a professor of political science at SUNY Stony Brook. Mr. Teske won the 2005 NASPAA/ASPA Distinguished Research Award and the 2005 University of Colorado at Denver top researcher award. He is coauthor of Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools and has written numerous articles on aspects of education policy including school choice, charter schools, parent decision-making and involvement, school leadership, and teacher training. He has also coauthored a book on entrepreneurs in local government, Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government. His research has been widely-discussed in the media, including The New York Times, New York Post, Denver Post, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Education Week, and WBEZ (NPR) Chicago.

Joe Williams covers the New York City school system for the New York Daily News. From 1994 to 2000 he covered the Milwaukee Public Schools and that city’s voucher program. Mr. Williams has won numerous national and local awards for education reporting and has recently authored a book on education politics, Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education.

Aimee Williamson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado. Her dissertation examines difference in human resource management policies in private, charter, and traditional public schools. She is coauthor of "Public Opinion about School Choice" in the 2005 Encyclopedia of Polling in America. Ms. Williamson has taught at the University of Colorado, Red Rocks Community College, and other institutions.
Steven F. Wilson is the Michael R. Sandler Senior Fellow at the Center for Business and Government of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and a consultant to Edison Schools. His book, Learning on the Job: When Business Takes on Public Schools, examines the first decade of private management of public schools. Mr. Wilson founded and served as CEO of Advantage Schools, a charter school management company. Before founding Advantage, he was special assistant for Massachusetts Governor William Weld during the passage and implementation of the state’s 1993 comprehensive education reform act. Mr. Wilson is the former executive director of the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research. His book, Reinventing the Schools: A Radical Plan for Boston, led to the establishment of pilot schools in Boston and the state’s charter school law, which he drafted.