Barnett Berry is the founder and President of the Center for Teaching Quality, Inc., based in Hillsborough, NC. The Center seeks to improve student learning by shaping policies through developing teacher leadership, building coalitions, and conducting practical research. Berry's career, which began as an under-prepared, inner-city high school teacher in 1978, has focused on a wide-range of efforts to close America’s student achievement gap by closing the teaching quality gap.

He has 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.

In the 1990s, Berry played a major role in developing the blue ribbon report of the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future, and later leading its state policy and partnership efforts.

Berry earned his Ph.D. in educational policy from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is author of over 100 journal articles, book chapters and commissioned reports on school reform, accountability and the teaching profession, and serves on boards and in an advisory capacity to numerous organizations committed to teaching quality, equity and social justice in America’s schools.