Arthur E. Wise, Chair
Betsy Rogers, Vice-Chair and Secretary
Virginia Edwards, Treasurer
Barnett Berry, President and CEO
Randy Bridges
Shannon C’de Baca
Linda Darling-Hammond
Paul Goren
James A. Kelly
Tom Lambeth, Chair Emeritus
Sharon Robinson
José Vilson
John Wilson

Arthur E. Wise, Chair

During his career, Dr. Arthur E. Wise has worked toward teacher quality and professionalism, school finance reform, and the advancement of educational research. At the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), he directed the design of performance-based accreditation, and led efforts to develop a system of quality assurance for the teaching profession. Among his numerous influential publications, Dr. Wise is co-author of A License to Teach, which is a blueprint for the professionalization of teaching. He first came to national prominence as the author of Rich Schools, Poor Schools: The Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity. The prescient 1968 book conceived the idea of the school finance reform lawsuit. His 1979 book Legislated Learning anticipated the call for teacher professionalism. As senior social scientist and director of the RAND Corporation’s Center for the Study of the Teaching Profession, Dr. Wise saw many of his proposed changes to education policy incorporated into state laws and regulations. Long active in federal education policy, he was associate director for research at the National Institute of Education, of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Subsequently, at the Office of Management and Budget, he helped to create the cabinet-level U.S. Department of Education. Dr. Wise is a graduate of the Boston (Public) Latin School, Harvard College, and received an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago.

Betsy Rogers, Vice-Chair and Secretary

Dr. Betsy Rogers is Chair of the Teacher Education Department at Samford University. Prior to this role she was a curriculum leader and teacher coach at Brighton School (K-8) on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Rogers has taught for 28 years in Title I schools, and her teaching excellence was recognized as 2002-2003 Alabama State Teacher of the Year and 2003-2004 National Teacher of the Year. After her term as NTOY, Dr. Rogers sought out the assignment at Brighton, a chronically low-performing school. She was recently named a School Improvement Specialist for the Jefferson County School District and continues to be based at Brighton. Dr. Rogers keeps a weblog called "Brighton's Hope" about her experiences at the school and her continuing professional growth. Dr. Rogers, who earned a doctorate in educational leadership in 2002, is an NBCT (Early Childhood Generalist) and a board member of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She was president of her state's independent teacher organization, the Alabama Conference of Educators, and chairs the Governor's Task Force on Teacher Quality. Dr. Rogers is a member of CTQ’s Teacher Leaders Network and also served as a founding member of the Alabama NBCT Network. In addition, she was a member of the TeacherSolutions team whose 2007 report, Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve, received considerable attention from education media and state and federal policymakers.

Virginia Edwards, Treasurer

As president of Editorial Projects in Education, Ms. Virginia “Ginny” Edwards oversees the 90-person, $14.5 million-a-year nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week and edweek.org.  She has held the post since 1997.

Ms. Edwards has been the editor-in-chief of Education Week – the premier “newspaper of record” for precollegiate education in the United States – since 1989.  For the past 16 years, she has also served as the editor of edweek.org, which reaches an audience of more than 1.2 million registered users.  EPE also publishes Digital Directions magazine and the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook, and is home to the TopSchoolJobs.org job-recruitment service and the EPE Research Center.

Before joining EPE, Ms. Edwards worked for two years for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and, for the nearly 10 years before that, was an editor and reporter at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. 

Barnett Berry, President and CEO

Dr. Barnett Berry is the President and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, Inc., based in Carrboro, North Carolina. The Center seeks to close the student achievement gap by closing the teaching quality gap. As a former high school teacher, Dr. Berry leads a research-based organization dedicated to dramatically improving student learning through teacher leadership initiatives which advance a 21st century, results-oriented teaching profession. His recently published book, TEACHING 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools… Now and in the Future, penned with twelve expert teachers from CTQ’s Teacher Leaders Network poses a provocative and hopeful future for the profession and guides much of CTQ’s current work. In 2003, he created the Teacher Leaders Network – a dynamic virtual community – whose purpose is to elevate the voices of expert teachers when it comes to policy debates regarding their profession and the students they serve. Dr. Berry has also worked as a social scientist at the RAND Corporation, served as a senior executive with the South Carolina State Department of Education and directed an education policy center while he was a professor at the University of South Carolina. He has authored numerous academic and trade publications. He serves on several boards and in an advisory capacity to numerous organizations committed to teaching quality, equity and social justice in America's schools.

Randy Bridges

Dr. Randy Bridges became superintendent of the Stafford County Public School System on December 6, 2010.  He came to Stafford County from Burlington, North Carolina, where for the previous four and a half years he was superintendent of the Alamance-Burlington School System.  Prior to Alamance-Burlington, he held other positions in the North Carolina public school system including serving as a classroom teacher for twelve years, a middle and high school principal, an associate superintendent for public relations, an associate superintendent for human resources, superintendent of the Orange County School System in Hillsborough, North Carolina.  He also served as superintendent of Rock Hill School District Three in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Dr. Bridges received his undergraduate and masters’ degrees from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and his doctorate of education from Fayetteville State University.  He serves on several local, state, and national committees and boards including the Southern Education Foundation Board of Directors of which he serves as Chairman and the Center for Teaching Quality Board of Directors.  In addition, he is a member of the prestigious Schlechty Center Superintendents’ Network.  Among other awards and achievements, Dr. Bridges is a recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, was recognized as the North Carolina School Boards Association Superintendent of the Year, and most recently was named the North Carolina Association of Educators Superintendent of the Year.

Dr. Bridges and his wife, Vernetta, are the parents of two children:  a daughter Dr. Randi Bridges-Raynor who is the Clinical Pharmacist for Emergency Medicine at Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a son Garrett Bridges who is a Media Relations Specialist with SERVE in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Shannon C'de Baca

Ms. Shannon C’de Baca is a 31-year teaching veteran (K–12 science) who moved from face-to-face teaching to online education years ago, after she developed a lab-intensive chemistry course for Iowa students who did not have an available chemistry teacher. She has worked with seven states and two national organizations in the development of science standards and teacher professional development. Her teaching has been recognized with honors from the Milken Family Foundation, National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the Iowa Department of Education, Sertoma, and PBS. She hosted the Annenberg television series, “The Missing Link in Mathematics,” worked with the PBS series NOVA, and served as a consultant for the National Education and the Economy, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Education Association, the NSTA, the U.S. Mint and the U.S. Department of State. Ms. C’de Baca served as one of two citizen ambassadors to Bahrain and continues to mentor teachers in the Mid East. She has worked as a designer and a facilitator for the Iowa statewide “Every Learner Inquires” initiative and guided development of the science component of the Iowa Core Curriculum. She continues to pursue her passion for equitable access to exceptional online courses for all students through work with the Iowa Technology Task Force and Iowa Learning Online. Ms. C’de Baca served on CTQ's TeacherSolutions 2030 team, co-authoring the book TEACHING 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools… Now and in the Future.

Linda Darling-Hammond

Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Dr. Darling-Hammond was the William F. Russell Professor in the Foundations of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. There, she was the founding Executive Director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF), the blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, catalyzed major policy changes across the United States to improve the quality of teacher education and teaching. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of teaching quality, school reform, and educational equity. Among her more than 200 publications is Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs (Jossey-Bass: 2006); The Right to Learn, recipient of the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award for 1998; and Teaching as the Learning Profession (Jossey-Bass: 1999, co-edited with Gary Sykes), which received the National Staff Development Council’s Outstanding Book Award for 2000. Dr. Darling-Hammond’s recent awards include the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's 2006 Pomeroy Award, the 2005 Horace Mann League Outstanding Educator Award from the American Association of School Administrators, the National Commission on African American Education's 2003 Founder’s Award, and Stanford University School of Education's 2002 Outstanding Teaching Award.

Paul Goren

Dr. Paul Goren is the Lewis-Sebring director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago Urban Education Institute. Dr. Goren served as senior vice president of The Spencer Foundation from 2001-2010 and as executive director of the Spencer Forum focusing on the dissemination of research to the policy and practice communities. Previously, he was the director of Child and Youth Development at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A former middle-school teacher, Dr. Goren worked as executive director (assistant superintendent) for Policy and Strategic Services in the Minneapolis Public Schools from 1995-98 and as a policy analyst and educational researcher in the San Diego City Schools in the mid-1980s. He worked in and subsequently directed the education policy studies division of the National Governors' Association (NGA) in Washington, DC between 1991 and 1995.

Dr. Goren has written on professional development and public engagement for the NGA; served as chief accountability officer in the Minneapolis Schools, where he helped develop capacity for data driven-decision making; and led the Spencer Foundation’s efforts to disseminate studies and findings to multiple audiences. Along with numerous presentations at philanthropic, practitioner, policy, and research forums, he served on the National Academy of Science task force on How People Learn. His writing includes commentaries for the National Society for the Study of Education yearbook on Developing the Teacher Workforce, and for Education Week on the relationship of foundations and philanthropy to school districts. He received the Ian Axford (New Zealand) Fellowship in public policy through NZ Fulbright to study Maori education policy. 

Dr. Goren serves on the board of TERC, a science and mathematics curriculum developer, and is on the Board of Y.O.U., a social service and support agency for students in the Evanston, IL public schools. He also serves on the Boards of the Donors Forum of Illinois and Foundation 65. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, a master of public affairs degree from the LBJ School at the University of Texas, and a B.A. from Williams College.

James A. Kelly

Dr. James A. Kelly has had a distinguished career in education policy, education finance, philanthropy, and teaching standards, assessments and certification. He is Senior Advisor to the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan; advises education organizations, international agencies, governments and foundations on education policy; and serves on the boards of many non-governmental organizations in the fields of education, philanthropy, art and music.

From 2008-2010 he was co-director of Strategic Management of Human Capital, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, and Ford Foundation. Led by the project's prestigious national task force, a dozen key American states and dozens of urban school districts implemented successful human capital reforms and developed policy proposals for further reforms that emphasized human talent recruitment and performance management in education. The reforms advanced through this project became important elements in federal education programs of the Obama Administration.

From 1987-1999 Dr. Kelly was founding President and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), where he led efforts to create National Board Certification (NBC), the US's advanced professional certification program for accomplished elementary and secondary teachers.  Almost all states provide recognition for NBC and with teacher union support, pay higher compensation to National Board Certified Teachers, the first time in American history that states have provided additional salary increments to teachers recognized as meeting higher standards for teaching quality. Despite a challenging "pass rate," over 90,000 teachers have become National Board Certified Teachers. The NBPTS was governed by a board of directors of 63 persons including governors, corporate CEOs, university presidents, educational leaders, and practicing classroom teachers. Over $200 million was raised from government, foundations and corporations to fund the research and development costs of this program.

From 1970-1981, Dr. Kelly was a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation,  where he influenced state education finance and tax policies to make their support for public education more equitable. An important element in the Ford program was building international networks of scholars and policy experts in Europe, Australia and Canada. Lasting efforts of this work are evident in more equitable provision of educational resources in a majority of American states.

From 1981-85, Dr. Kelly was president of Spring Hill Center, a conference center in Wayzata, MN, and from 1985-87 was president of the Center (now College) for Creative Studies, in Detroit, MI. He was an assistant and associate professor at Teachers College, Columbia University from 1966-1970, taught part-time at Harvard University while based at the Ford Foundation, and was responsible for education policy at the National Urban Coalition during the 1968-69 urban upheavals in many American cities. From 1961-63, he worked in Lahore, Pakistan in a team that established the Institute of Education and Research at Punjab University, and launched the construction of the new campus for Punjab University, that country's oldest and largest university which is now attended by over 25,000 students.

Dr. Kelly began his career as a teacher, assistant principal and assistant superintendent of the public schools in Ladue, Missouri. His B.A degree is from Shimer College, then an integral part of the College of the University of Chicago. His M. A. is from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. is from Stanford University, with concentrations in education, political science and economics.

Since leaving the NBPTS in 1999 and "retiring", Dr. Kelly has served as a senior advisor to many organizations, including the World Bank, the National Academy of Sciences (working to develop their Strategic Educational Research Program), Atlantic Philanthropies, the Hunt Institute at the University of North Carolina, Standard and Poors, Widmeyer Communications, SchoolNet, Wireless Generation, the Henry Ford Learning Institute, and others. He served on the executive board of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), and on the Board of Overseers of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kelly was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education in 1999, and has received many honors and awards throughout his career.

Dr. Kelly is co-chair of Learning to Give, a non-profit project that has worked with teachers to develop over 1500 on-line teaching units to help students learn about volunteerism, philanthropy and community service; the free website of this organization is visited monthly by more than 200,000 teachers. He is a board member of the Center for Teaching Quality and of the Phi Delta Kappa International Foundation. He chairs the Art Museum Committee and is vice-chair of the Governing Board of the Cranbrook Art Academy, in Bloomfield Hills, MI. For over 20 years he was a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Educational Leadership, and (also for over 20 years) has been a board member of Musica Sacra, the professional choral music organization whose concerts at Carnegie Hall and other New York City venues receive rave reviews.

Mentored throughout his career by extraordinarily wise leaders, Dr. Kelly in turn assists many friends and colleagues as they develop their own careers and spheres of influence. He has four children and seven grandchildren. His wife, Mariam C. Noland, is president of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.

Tom Lambeth, Chair Emeritus

Mr. Tom Lambeth is the former Executive Director (1978-2000) and now Senior Fellow at The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation (ZSRF). Mr. Lambeth has served as both the chair and a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina—his alma mater—which honored him with a Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Williams Richardson Davie Award and an Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award. He holds honorary degrees from Wake Forest University and Pfeiffer College. Before his work at ZSRF, Mr. Lambeth served as Chief of Staff to Governor Terry Sanford and to Congressman L. Richardson Preyer and as a staff member of the Smith Richardson Foundation. He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the North Carolina 4H (2006) and NC Action for Children (2007). Mr. Lambeth also serves as Chair of the Board for the NC Rural Center, the BB&T Mutual Funds group, and the BB&T Variable Insurance Funds group. Mr. Lambeth’s commitment to North Carolina education efforts runs deep: he was born in Clayton, NC, and is an alumnus of public schools in High Point, Thomasville, Washington, and Statesville, NC.

Sharon P. Robinson

Dr. Sharon Robinson is a nationally known leader in education rights for disadvantaged students and serves as President and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). The former President of the Educational Testing Service’s Educational Policy Leadership Institute, she is a lifelong civil rights activist who received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kentucky, where she also earned her doctorate. Before joining ETS, Dr. Robinson was assistant secretary of education with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement. She also held a variety of leadership positions at the National Education Association, including director of the National Center for Innovation, NEA’s research and development arm, and she recently served as interim deputy director of the National PTA’s Programs and Legislation office.  Her many awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Louisville, the Award of Appreciation from the National Head Start Association, the Founders Award from the National Helping Hands Enrichment & Leadership Foundation, the Girl Scouts’ Women of Distinction Award, and the Teacher of America Award.  Dr. Robinson serves on the boards of the Alfred Harcourt Foundation and Jobs for America’s Graduates; she also serves on the Supplemental Education Task Force of Columbia University and has chaired the Diversity Issues in Measurement Committee of the National Council for Measurement in Education.

José Vilson

Mr. José Vilson is a math teacher, coach, and data analyst for a public middle school in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, as part of the NYC Department of Education. He is in his 6th year as a teacher, having finished the New York City Teaching Fellows program in 2007. Mr. Vilson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in mathematics education from the City College of New York. He served on CTQ's TeacherSolutions 2030 team, co-authoring the book TEACHING 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools… Now and in the Future. Mr. Vilson has worked on creating professional development for his colleagues on topics such as working on goals for the classroom and using the ARIS system, a data management system under the NYC Department of Education. He has spoken at Lincoln Center as part of the NYC Teaching Fellows’ induction ceremonies and writes regularly about education issues mainly at his blog. Mr. Vilson is also a committed poet, web designer and developer, mentor, and blogger for the Education section of The Huffington Post, named one of the top 20 teacher blogs by Scholastic Inc. He can be found at http://thejosevilson.com.

John Wilson

Mr. John I. Wilson, a long-time special education teacher and Association leader, was executive director of the National Education Association from November 1, 2000 to August 31, 2011. The nation's largest teachers union, NEA also represents education support professionals, higher education faculty, school administrators, retired educators, and education students who plan to become teachers. In all, NEA has over 3.2 million members, a staff of 555, and an annual budget exceeding $300 million.

During his tenure as executive director, Mr. Wilson championed a minimum salary of $40,000 for every teacher and a living wage for Education Support Professionals (ESP).  He also launched an NEA initiative to engage the best teachers in sharing ideas on staffing high-poverty, low achieving schools with the most accomplished teachers.

Mr. Wilson is currently a Senior Fellow with the Pearson Foundation and serves as the Chair of the Advisory Committee for Purple America. He has chaired the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a coalition of businesses and education groups that advocates for every child in America to graduate from high school with 21st century skills. The 3E Institute presented him with the Educator 500 President’s Award in 2006 for being “a true entrepreneurial educator.” He has also chaired the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of leading education organizations with more than 10 million members dedicated to improving student learning in America’s public schools.

Prior to assuming the highest staff position at NEA headquarters, Mr. Wilson served the Association as president and executive director of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE). With Wilson at the helm of this NEA state affiliate, NCAE strengthened teacher training systems, professional development programs, teacher compensation, and teacher recruitment. His accomplishments include the development of new support systems for teachers pursuing certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. As a result, today North Carolina has more National Board Certified Teachers and candidates than any other state. In addition, Mr. Wilson led a successful campaign that raised North Carolina teacher salaries from 43rd to 23rd in the nation, and he helped establish the North Carolina Teacher Academy, a state-funded program that provides high-quality teacher professional development.

Mr. Wilson has been an NEA activist since his days at Western Carolina University, where he served as president of the NEA student chapter. As a middle school teacher of special needs students, he was an active Association leader throughout his 20-year teaching career. He served as president of the Raleigh Association of Classroom Teachers and the Wake County Association of Classroom Teachers, and also served on the NEA Board of Directors and the NEA Executive Committee.

A true North Carolinian, Mr. Wilson was born in Burlington, North Carolina. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in education and received a master's degree in education from the University of North Carolina.

Mr. Wilson loves mystery novels and is a voracious reader. He "lives and breathes politics" and is an avid Tar Heel fan.