Roy Barnes is the former governor of Georgia and founder of the legal firm, The Barnes Law Group.... In 1998, Barnes was elected to serve as the eightieth governor of the state of Georgia. During his term, he concentrated on education reform, health care reform, and remedies for urban growth and sprawl. He created the Georgia Cancer Coalition and served as chair of the Southern Regional Education Board, the Southern Governors’ Association, and the Education Commission of the States.

Anthony Carnevale currently serves as Research Professor, Director of the Global Institute on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. Between 1996 and 2006, Carnevale served as Vice President for Public Leadership at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). While at ETS Carnevale was appointed by President George Bush to serve on the White House Commission on Technology and Adult Education.

Rudy Crew is a nationally acclaimed educator and author whose career has spanned from the classroom to the chancellorship of the nation’s largest school district, New York City Public Schools, where he served from 1995 to 1999. In 2004, he became superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s fourth-largest school district.

Christopher T. Cross is chairman of Cross & Joftus, LLC, an education policy consulting firm. In addition, Cross serves as a consultant to the Broad Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation. He has also served as a senior fellow with the Center for Education Policy and a distinguished senior fellow with the Education Commission of the States.

David P. Driscoll is the former commissioner of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He has worked in public education and educational leadership for forty-three years. A former secondary school mathematics teacher, Driscoll was named assistant superintendent of Melrose, MA, schools in 1972 and then superintendent in 1984. He served in that role until 1993, when he was appointed Massachusetts deputy commissioner of education. Driscoll became interim commissioner of education on July 1, 1998, and was named commissioner on March 10, 1999.

Christopher Edley Jr. joined the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law as dean and professor of law in 2004, after twenty-three years as a professor at Harvard Law School. Edley’s academic work is primarily in the areas of civil rights and administrative law. He has also taught federalism, budget policy, defense department procurement law, national security law, and environmental law. Edley was co-founder of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, a renowned multidisciplinary research and policy think tank focused on issues of racial justice.

James B. Hunt Jr. is a nationally recognized leader in education and has led his state through twenty years of dramatic economic change. Serving a historic four terms as governor (two terms between 1977 and 1985, and another two from 1993 to 2001), Hunt has been at the forefront of education reform in his state and in the nation. As governor, Hunt focused on early childhood development and improving the quality of teaching in America, and has devoted much of the last fifteen years of his life to excellence in teaching in the United States.

John Jackson became the president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education in July 2007 after seven years in leadership positions at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), during which he served as the NAACP’s chief policy officer and, prior to that, the national director of education. In this role, Jackson leads the foundation’s efforts to ensure a high quality public education for all students regardless of race or gender.

Arthur E. Levine is the sixth president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Before his appointment at Woodrow Wilson, he was president and professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He served previously as chair of the higher education program, chair of the Institute for Educational Management, and senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Ray Marshall is the current Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin, and is president of Ray Marshall, Inc., a research and consulting firm. Marshall was the U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. He is also a former national president of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Economy, Industrial Relations Research Association, and has worked at the American Economic Association and Council on Foreign Relations.

Thomas W. Payzant is currently a professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to that, he served as superintendent of the Boston Public Schools from October of 1995 until his retirement in June of 2006. Before coming to Boston, Payzant was appointed by President Clinton to serve as assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education at the United States Department of Education.

Terry Peterson is the director of the Afterschool and Community Learning Network. He also holds the position of Senior Fellow for Policy and Partnerships at the College of Charleston. Peterson serves on the executive committee of the National Center for Summer Learning at John Hopkins University, the Council for Corporate and School Partnerships, and the Mayor of Charleston's School Reform Committee. He is involved in international education efforts, most recently in Argentina, Mongolia, Brazil, Northern Ireland, South Korea and Denmark.

Raymond C. Pierce became dean of the North Carolina Central University School of Law in July 2005. Since that time, Pierce has managed the law school’s growth which, has included the largest student enrollment in the school’s history, an expanded faculty, a significantly increased state budget allocation and the completion of the final stages of a building renovation and new construction addition to the law school facility.

Hugh B. Price is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the nation’s oldest think tank. His activities include writing and editing books, preparing policy briefs and convening roundtables on topics of longstanding interest, such as education, civil rights, equal opportunity and criminal justice.

Richard W. Riley is currently a senior partner in the law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, a Distinguished Professor and Advisory Board Chair of the Richard W. Riley Institute of Government Politics and Public Leadership at Furman University, a Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina and Distinguished Senior Fellow at NAFSA Association of International Educators.

Former Congresswoman Patricia Scott Schroeder is president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the national trade organization of the U.S. book publishing industry, a post she assumed on June 1, 1997. Schroeder left Congress undefeated in 1996 after representing Colorado’s First Congressional District (Denver) in the United States House of Representatives for twenty-four years.

Susan Sclafani works with Chartwell Education Group, an international consulting group, and the National Center for Education and the Economy. She served as assistant secretary of education for vocational and adult education from 2003 to 2005 in the U.S. Department of Education (ED). Earlier she served as counselor to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, where she was the U.S. representative to both the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation.

Rosa A. Smith is the regional education director for New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS). In this role, she supports the mission to ensure high academic achievement for every student by attracting and preparing outstanding leaders and supporting the performance of the urban public schools they lead.

William Taylor is the chairman of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights. A lawyer, teacher, and writer in the fields of civil rights and education, he practices law in Washington, DC, specializing in litigation and other forms of advocacy on behalf of low income and minority children.

Valerie Woodruff has served as secretary of education for the state of Delaware since July 1999, when she was appointed in the acting capacity by former Governor Tom Carper. She was subsequently confirmed by the State Senate and then reappointed by Governor Ruth Ann Minner. Prior to being appointed secretary of education, Woodruff served as the associate secretary for curriculum and instructional improvement for the Delaware Department of Education. She has been a teacher, counselor, assistant principal, and principal in high schools in both Maryland and Delaware.