Invitational Conference Marking the 50th Anniversary of Dan Lortie’s 'Schoolteacher'

   Save the Date: October 30-31, 2025
    The George Washington University | Washington, D.C. 
       View conference location information >

Detailed schedule to follow. Registration will begin at 8:30 am on Oct 30, and events will conclude by 3:00 pm on Oct. 31. Conference organizers will host a dinner for all attendees on Oct. 30.

The small size of the conference will enable an interactive experience featuring presentations, panel discussions, and collective sense-making.

Deborah Ball

Deborah Loewenberg Ball is the Jessie Jean Storey-Fry Distinguished University Professor of Education, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, a research professor in the Institute for Social Research, and the founding director of TeachingWorks. She is an experienced elementary teacher and continues to teach children every summer. She studies the practice of teaching, using mathematics as a context to investigate the challenges of helping children develop understanding and agency and to work collectively. She is an expert on the demands of teaching and imperatives for teachers’ professional education. Loewenberg Ball has served on the National Science Board and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Mathematical Society, and the American Educational Research Association, which she served as president in 2017-18.

Brendan Bartanen

Brendan Bartanen is associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia. His research leverages large-scale datasets to examine education labor market topics, including the teacher pipeline and measures of teacher and principal effectiveness. His recent projects include examining pre-service teachers' motivations to enter the profession, measuring the quality and content of feedback provided to pre-service teachers during clinical teaching, and an analysis of interest in teaching and similar careers among 11.5 million college applicants in the United States.

Lisa Clarke

As Vice President of Certification & Innovation, Lisa Clarke leads the National Board’s certification and innovation portfolio, including certification design, candidate experience, partnerships, and journey platforms. She previously served as Team Lead for the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching Ambassador Fellows, amplifying the voices and expertise of teachers in federal policy.

A National Board Certified Teacher in Social Studies-History, Clarke taught in Kent, WA, and Brooklyn, NY, and held leadership roles in the Kent School District. Named the World Affairs Council’s 2011 World Educator, she has advanced global education, teacher leadership, and professional learning through service with the Washington State Council for the Social Studies and the National Council for the Social Studies.

Clarke holds degrees from Providence College, Rutgers, and Brooklyn College and is pursuing an Ed.D. at American University.

Julie Cohen

Julie Cohen is the Charles S. Robb associate professor at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the conceptualization and measurement of teaching quality, the ways that accountability and teacher evaluation systems shape teaching practice, and the development of effective instructional practices in pre-service teacher education and professional development. Several of her current research projects focus on the use of mixed reality simulations as a practice space and assessment platform for pre-service teachers. She is also leading a project centered on operationalizing, measuring, and supporting equitable reading teaching. Her work has been generously funded by the National Science Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. 

Morgaen Donaldson

Morgaen L. Donaldson is the Phillip E. Austin Endowed Professor of Education Policy and Leadership and Associate Dean for Research at the Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on school leader and teacher learning, development and evaluation, policy implementation within schools and districts, and labor relations. She is the author of Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Teacher Evaluation: Understanding the Research and Theory (Routledge, 2020) and has published in a range of scholarly and practitioner journals. Dr. Donaldson is also the co-director of the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration, a research-practice partnership between the Connecticut State Department of Education and the University of Connecticut that brings together Connecticut researchers to conduct evaluations on pressing questions in the state’s schools.

Wiselene Dorceus

Wiselene “Wizzy” Dorceus is a Strategy, Learning, and Evaluation Officer at the Walton Family Foundation, supporting the Home Region and Education programs. She manages research and evaluation portfolios, facilitates strategic learning, and integrates AI tools to streamline evaluation workflows. Prior to Walton, Wizzy was an Evaluation Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, where she strengthened impact measurement across education, entrepreneurship, and civic programs. She also worked at DAI, supporting USAID’s digital strategy, and at the UN Development Programme in Timor-Leste, where she led digital ID efforts to promote social inclusion. Wizzy began her career at Nielsen in product marketing. She holds a Master of Policy Management from Georgetown University as a National Urban Fellow and a BA from Denison University, where she was a Posse Scholar.

Gil Eyal

Gil Eyal is a professor of Sociology and Director of the Trust Collaboratory at Columbia University. His work encompasses sociological research on science, medicine, professions, intellectuals and knowledge, especially as these intersect with political and legal institutions. He refers to this as the sociology of expertis. He studies what scientists and professionals do, but also in how ordinary people as “lay experts” put together novel forms of expertise. His research is interested not only in who is considered an expert, but also in what is necessary to be in place for the expert performance of a task.

Michael Feuer

Professor of Education and International Relations, GW; Immediate Past Dean, Graduate School of Education and Human Development, GW; Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University; Visiting Professor, University of Pennsylvania; Senior Scholar, Penn Washington; Past President National Academy of Education; Non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings

Tina Fletcher

Tina Fletcher is a senior officer for the strategy, learning and evaluation department at the Walton Family Foundation. She assists with research, evaluation and measurement related to the Education Program.

Before joining the foundation, Tina served as a postdoctoral research fellow for the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Prior to studying education policy, Tina served as a social studies teacher in Washington, DC, a political fundraiser and an education consultant in the Arkansas Delta.

Tina holds a B.A. in Political Science and African American Studies from the University of Arkansas, an Ed.M. in Teacher Education from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jessica Furer

Jessica Furer is a Senior Program Officer in 2025 at the Wallace Foundation. In this capacity, she primarily manages grants in the Equity-Centered Pipeline Initiative. Before joining Wallace, Furer served first as associate director and then as chief of staff at Eskolta School Research and Design, a nonprofit consulting organization that helps school districts design and strengthen schools that better meet the needs of underserved students. Having started her career as a middle school and high school history teacher in independent schools, Furer went on to work as a project manager at the New York City Department of Education and a program officer at New Visions for Public Schools, a nonprofit working in New York City schools. 

Conra Gist

Dr. Conra D. Gist is a Professor in the College of Education at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on understanding the various types of programs, policies and practices that support the growth and advancement of community teachers. She is principal investigator for several research initiatives dedicated to studying the design and implementation of humanizing and sustaining teacher development systems through research-practice partnerships.

Josh Glazer

Joshua L. Glazer is a professor of education policy at the George Washington University. His research and teaching examine multiple approaches to improving underperforming schools in high-poverty, urban environments; the political dynamics of state takeovers; the organization of the teaching profession; and the design of research practice partnerships. His book, The Grit and the Grind: Building high-performing education systems in an era of polarization, will be released by University of Chicago Press in Spring, 2026.

Dan Goldhaber

Dr. Dan Goldhaber is the Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER, caldercenter.org) at the American Institutes for Research and the Director of the Center for Education Data & Research (CEDR, cedr.us) at the University of Washington. Both CALDER and CEDR are focused on using state administrative data to do research that informs decisions about policy and practice. Dan’s work focuses on issues of educational productivity and reform at the K-12 level, the broad array of human capital policies that influence the composition, distribution, and quality of teachers in the workforce, and connections between students' K-12 experiences and
postsecondary outcomes.

Simona Goldin

Simona Goldin is a Research Professor at the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina and a faculty fellow at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity. Dr. Goldin has studied ways to transform the preparation of beginning teachers to teach in more racially just and equitable ways and has elaborated the teaching practices that bridge children’s work in schools on academic content with their home and community-based experiences. Her most recent work has looked at the ways that innovations are weaponized against the very communities they are meant to support.

Ellen Goldring

Ellen Goldring is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Education Leadership and Policy, and Research Dean, at Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. Goldring’s research focuses on the intersection of education policy and school improvement with an emphasis on educational leadership. Her scholarship has offered important insights into the roles of assistant principals and on school district redesign for building and sustaining principal pipelines and career pathways to effective school leadership. Her scholarship also addresses alternative staffing approaches and new conceptualizations of the teaching profession. A fellow of the American Educational Research Association, she is the recipient of the University Council for Educational Administration’s Roald F. Campbell Lifetime Achievement Award and is an elected member to the National Academy of Education.

Jason Grissom

Jason A. Grissom is Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Public Policy and Education at Vanderbilt University. He is also the faculty director of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA), which conducts research to inform Tennessee’s school improvement efforts. Dr. Grissom’s research makes use of administrative, survey, interview, and other data to study educators and the broader systems that inform their work. He is especially interested in school and district leaders and has written extensively on leader effectiveness and how school leaders are prepared, selected, supervised, and evaluated. He also studies the causes and consequences of turnover among teachers, principals, and superintendents. Dr. Grissom is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and former president of the Association for Education Finance and Policy. He holds a PhD in political economics from Stanford University.

Michael Hansen

Michael Hansen is a senior fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. A labor economist by training, he has conducted original research on a wide array of education policy issues, with a specialization in teacher policy and school accountability. He has conducted original research on teacher diversity, teacher quality, student access to quality teaching, and STEM learning. Findings from Hansen’s research have received media coverage from prominent outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Politico, and Education Week. His work has also been published in peer-reviewed research journals including American Economic Review, Education Finance and Policy, Economica, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, among others. He also co-edits the Brown Center Chalkboard, the Brookings Institution’s blog on domestic education policy and research. Hansen is an Eisenhower Fellow (2020 Zhi-Xing China program) and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington. Hansen is the co-author of the book, “Teacher Diversity and Student Success: Why Racial Representation Matters in the Classroom” (Harvard Education Press, 2021).

Ilana Horn

Ilana Seidel Horn holds the Wachtmeister Family Chair of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University Peabody College. A former high school mathematics teacher, she became interested in how teachers' work conditions shape what is instructionally possible. Her scholarship spans questions of in-service teachers' professional learning, pre-service education, district level instructional improvement, and students' experiences of different forms of mathematics instruction. These projects implicate the way teachers' work is organized in supporting the best forms of instruction for students. 

David Houston

David Houston is an Assistant Professor of Education at George Mason University, where he is also the academic program coordinator of the Education Policy program, the director of EdPolicyForward: The Center for Education Policy, and a university affiliate faculty in the Schar School of Policy and Government. Dr. Houston studies K-12 education politics, governance, and public opinion.

Erika Hunt

Dr. Erika Hunt is Director for the Lead Hub at ROE #17, a role she began in May 2022. Previously, she spent 18 years at Illinois State University as Co-Director in the Center for the Study of Education Policy. A former staff member for Governor Jim Edgar, she has served on various state task forces and the Governor’s P-20 Education Council. Hunt directs several large grants, including a $4M federal EIR grant, and previously managed over $20M in federal school leadership grants (SLP, SEED, and EIR) and a $6M Wallace Foundation grant. Her work led to significant state policy changes in leadership development and earned the ECS 2014 Frank Newman Award for State Innovation. For 17 years, Hunt and her husband owned Scribbles Center for Learning, a childcare center that linked her policy work to practical application.

Susan Moore Johnson

Susan Moore Johnson, a former high school teacher and administrator, is a Research Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Johnson is a national expert on teachers’ work and the policies that shape it. As director of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, she and her colleagues have studied alternative preparation, hiring, induction, performance-based pay, teacher leadership, and local union leadership (www.projectngt.gse.harvard.edu). Her book, Where Teachers Thrive: Organizing Schools for Success (2019), explores how schools that succeed in low-income communities support and enhance their teachers’ work. Johnson also has a continuing interest in how schools operate within districts. With colleagues from the Public Education Leadership Program, she co-authored Achieving Coherence in District Improvement: Managing the Relationship Between the Central Office and Schools (2015).

Theresa Jones

Theresa D. Jones (B.S. American University, M.B.A. Duke University and M. Ed Broad Center for the Management of School Systems) has been Chief Achievement and Accountability Officer for Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) since 2015.  She leads the district’s efforts to provide teachers, principals, and district leaders with the tools and expertise they need for strategic planning and decision making, while supporting them in the implementation of research and evidence-based student achievement practices.  Her office is also responsible for the administration of federal, state, and locally mandated student assessments and the monitoring and compliance activities associated with grant allocations to support strategic allocation and utilization of local, state, and federal resources.  Ms. Jones also serves as a Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) Executive Committee Member, Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) Task Force Member and City Schools’ Charter and Operator-Led Schools Advisory Board Member.  Her prior experiences in education include leading employee evaluation redesign for Prince George’s County Public Schools, as well as teaching in the Center for Leadership Education at Johns Hopkins University.  

Maya Kaul

Maya Kaul is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research integrates organizational theory, political science, and sociological theories of race to examine how educational reforms and the institutional and organizational conditions of schools and teacher education programs shape the K–12 teaching profession.

She earned her Ph.D. in education policy from Penn GSE in 2024. Her work has been recognized with a 2023 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, an Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Fellowship, and the David L. Clark Scholar Award. Her dissertation received the 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award from AERA Division L and the 2025 James D. Anderson Outstanding Dissertation Award from AACTE.

She previously worked at the Learning Policy Institute and began her career as a Fulbright Scholar in Finland, studying Finland’s approaches to teacher education and professional development.

Elham Kazemi

Professor Kazemi’s research focuses on how professional learning communities develop in racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse schools where teachers and leaders learn with and from their students. In collaboration with educators, she studies the work involved in eliciting and responding to children’s mathematical thinking and building joyful classrooms where children feel they are known and seen. This work involves collaborating with schools to tackle inequities perpetuated through structural school-level practices and everyday classroom interactions, such as the use of ability grouping and assessments and how children are invited to participate in discussions. The goal of her work is to make schools places where children and educators thrive.

Matthew Kraft

Matthew Kraft is a Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University. His work focuses on two primary areas: improving the effectiveness of K-12 educators and schools, and examining how education systems can adapt to and mitigate climate change. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles on topics including teacher labor markets (hiring, professional development, evaluation, working conditions, strikes, shortages, and layoffs); interpreting effect sizes in education research; school-based tutoring and mentoring programs; and learning time in school. Matt served as a Senior Economist with the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2024-25. He is also an elected school board member and previously taught middle and high school humanities.

Andrew Kwok 

Dr. Andrew Kwok is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture in the School of Education and Human Development at Texas A&M. His research focuses on beginning teacher support, particularly from three separate angels. He examines teacher preparation policy through issues related to diversifying the teacher pipeline and excavating teacher beliefs in relationship to instructional quality, entry, and attrition. He also studies the preparation, training, and implementation of classroom management, a key pedagogical skill that beleaguers many novice teachers. Lastly, he investigates teacher induction and new educator supports, generally around coaching and support. Dr. Kwok previously served as faculty at California State University, San Bernardino and was a high school science teacher in Oakland, CA.

Adam Lefstein

Adam Lefstein is a professor of education and the Morton L. Mandel Director of the Seymour Fox School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research and teaching focuses on pedagogy, classroom interaction, teacher learning and educational change. In investigating these issues, he takes a linguistic ethnographic approach, in which he combines the holistic interpretation that characterizes ethnography and the rigorous tools and systematic approach of linguistics. Current research projects include an ethnographic investigation of studio pedagogy an Arts and Design Academy, a study of teachers’ engagement in formative feedback processes through the use of a student survey tool, a study of the affordances and constraints of classroom discussion genres and structures, and a bibliometric study of “educational” research in Israeli universities.

Constance Lindsay

Dr. Constance A. Lindsay is an assistant professor of education leadership at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned a Ph.D. in human development and social policy from Northwestern University, where she was an Institute of Education Sciences predoctoral fellow. Her research examines teacher quality and diversity, racial achievement gaps, and adolescent development. Dr. Lindsay’s work has been published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Social Science Research, and has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her findings have informed the education platforms of leaders including Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Ayanna Pressley. A native of Washington, DC, she previously served as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education.

Melissa Arnold Lyon

Melissa Arnold Lyon (Mimi) is an assistant professor of public policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, SUNY. Melissa studies the political economy of education policy, focusing on labor, governance, and teacher politics and policy. Her research has been published in journals including Educational Researcher, Journal of Human Resources, American Educational Research Journal, Political Behavior, Education Finance and Policy, Economics of Education Review, Urban Affairs Review, and Policy Studies Journal. Melissa received her Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to graduate school, she was a sixth grade teacher in Houston, Texas.

Jal Mehta

Jal Mehta is Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A sociologist by training, his work focuses on how to remake the industrial-era school system into a modern learning organization that creates passion and purpose for both students and adults.  He is the author, most recently, with Sarah Fine, of In Search of Deeper Learning: Inside the Effort to Remake the American High School, which won the Grawemeyer Award for excellent public writing on education. Jal works with teachers, schools, districts, states, and provinces in the United States and around the world, seeking to cull wisdom from leading practitioners and share it with the field. Jal is also the proud recipient of the Morningstar Teaching Award and is the co-host of Free Range Humans, a podcast about “making schools fit for human consumption.”

Etai Mizrav

Etai Mizrav is an education policy researcher, consultant, and Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, specializing in educational inequality. Dr. Mizrav's research focuses on uncovering systemic drivers of educational inequality, particularly in school segregation and teacher workforce diversity. He also works with states nationwide on developing strategies to alleviate educator shortages, conducts equity audits for school districts, has advised international partners as well. Dr. Mizrav previously served as the Manager of Education Policy and Equity for the Washington DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education. He holds a Ph.D. in Education from George Washington University and an MPP from Georgetown University. 

Yas Nakib

Yas Nakib is the program director and professor of Education Policy, and Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

Christine Neumerski

Dr. Christine M. Neumerski is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation and Improvement and the Associate Director for the EdD in School System Leadership at the College of Education, University of Maryland. She began her career as a middle school teacher in Washington, DC, and then as a teacher educator in Detroit, MI. These experiences led her to want to understand the systemic barriers that marginalized students face in accessing quality learning opportunities. Accordingly, her research focuses on improving instruction for vulnerable student populations; instructional leadership as a lever for school reform; research-practice partnerships; and the relationship between public policies and classroom practices. Prior to joining the faculty at UMD, Christine worked at Vanderbilt University and the University of Michigan, where she conducted large-scale studies of leadership and school system improvement. She has also worked in urban teacher and leader education, and more recently, on deeper learning opportunities for neurodiverse children. Christine received her PhD in Educational Administration and Policy from the University of Michigan.

Carla O’Connor

Carla O’Connor is University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, and Professor of Education at the University of Michigan where she also directs Wolverine Pathways, a pre-collegiate program serving underrepresented youth in Michigan. A sociologist of education, her work includes examinations of Black identity, perceptions of opportunity, and educational outcomes; the social, historical, and organizational forces that structure Black resilience and vulnerability; and the racialized co-construction of family-school relations. Her work appears in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, Sociology of Education, Review of Research in Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. She has co-edited and contributed to handbooks and edited volumes that contend with issues of race, identity, and educational access. She delivered the 2019 AERA Wallace Foundation Distinguished Lecture.

Aaron Pallas

Aaron Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. A former editor of the American Sociological Association journal Sociology of Education, he is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and an elected member of the National Academy of Education and of the Sociological Research Association, the preeminent honorary society of sociology scholars. Pallas uses a variety of research tools to inform the public about the relevance and usability of educational research for policy and practice. He educates stakeholders—including representatives of the media—about the complexities and unexpected consequences of accountability and resource distribution policies in public schools. His recent research addresses the sociology of teaching and teachers' work and careers, including teacher accountability systems, undergraduate teaching improvement, and the preparation of education researchers.

Heather Peske

In 2022, Dr. Heather Peske was named National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ) next President. She comes to NCTQ from her role as Senior Associate Commissioner for Instructional Support in the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (MA DESE) where she implemented policies and programs across teacher development, educator preparation, and curriculum and instruction. Dr. Peske earned her master’s degree and doctorate in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She started her career in education as a 4th grade teacher. 

Donald Peurach

Donald J. Peurach is a Professor of Educational Policy, Leadership, and Innovation in the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education. He is also the Faculty Director of the EdHub for Community and Professional Learning at the University of Michigan, Co-Director of the Improvement Scholars Network, and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. His research focuses on the organization, management, and improvement of instruction in education systems, with a particular focus on network-based continuous improvement. Dr. Peurach is co-editor of The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022); author of Seeing Complexity in Public Education: Problems, Possibilities, and Success for All (2011, Oxford University Press); and co-author of Improvement by Design: The Promise of Better Schools (2014, University of Chicago Press).

Esther Quintero

Esther Quintero is a Senior Fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute. Her work focuses on conducting and synthesizing research in two main areas, the social-organizational context of teachers and early literacy policy. In collaboration with Susan B. Neuman (New York University), Quintero co-leads a project that tracks and analyzes state reading legislation enacted since 2019. She is the editor of Teaching In Context (Harvard Education Press, 2017) and author of numerous analyses, commentaries, and articles published in American Educator, the Institute's blog, and other outlets. Quintero's interests also include understanding the relationship between educational research, policy, and practice; social inequality; and the sociology of gender and race. She holds a B.A. from the University of Seville (Spain) and a Ph.D. in sociology from Cornell University.

Sahara Pradhan

Sahara Pradhan is a Research Fellow at the Wallace Foundation, where she is responsible for supporting the research unit in the development and implementation of new and current initiatives across all foundation focus areas. Sahara brings eight years of experience as an education researcher and evaluator in a variety of educational settings, including nonprofits, K-12 schools, higher education, and out-of-school programs. Sahara earned her undergraduate degree from Vassar College and an M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Massachusetts in Education Policy, Research and Administration. Her research draws on interdisciplinary theories and methods to study how emerging technologies reshape and reorganize teaching practices. 

Russell Ramsey

Russell Ramsey is the Vice President for Education at Gates Family Foundation. Prior to joining Gates in 2023, he served as Executive Director of Enrollment and Campus Planning for Denver Public Schools, leading the teams responsible for school choice, planning and analysis, real estate, and facility allocation. Russ led the education grantmaking program at the Houston Endowment and served as the organization’s Director of Learning and Evaluation, strengthening organizational impact by managing strategy development and evaluating evidence of progress toward goals. He has experience as a classroom teacher, teacher coach, and school leader in many different educational contexts. Russ has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas A&M University and a master’s in public policy with a concentration in K-12 education policy from Vanderbilt University.

Luis Rodriguez

Luis A. Rodriguez is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at New York University. Dr. Rodriguez's research examines how educator quality, retention, and diversity; school discipline; and school climate and working conditions—shaped by organizational, policy, and socio-political factors—impact the P–12 education workforce and student outcomes, with a focus on advancing equitable access to high-quality teaching and reducing exclusionary disciplinary practices for students. Dr. Rodriguez earned his doctorate in K-12 Education Leadership and Policy Studies with a specialization in Quantitative Methods from Vanderbilt University, and holds a bachelor’s in Economics from Swarthmore College.

Jennifer Russell

Jennifer Lin Russell is a Professor of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Co-Director (with Donald Peurach) of the Improvement Scholars Network. Her research focuses on organizing educational systems for improvement, with a particular emphasis on networked continuous improvement. Her work seeks to reshape the relationship between educational research and practice to expand learning opportunities for students. She is co-editor of The Foundational Handbook on Improvement Research in Education (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022).

Ellen Sherratt

Dr. Ellen Sherratt is a national expert on teacher shortages who has worked extensively translating research to policy audiences. As a thought leader, Dr. Sherratt spearheaded the national push of states and researchers to improve teacher supply and demand data. She led a national advocacy campaign to invest in higher teacher salaries, including introducing the American Teacher Act to the U.S. Congress with nearly 100 collaborating organizations.

Dr. Sherratt served as the Deputy Director of the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, a former federally-funded technical assistance center at American Institutes for Research that translated research for state education agencies. Dr. Sherratt served as Vice- President for Policy and Research at the National Board and as Board President and Acting Executive Director at the Teacher Salary Project.

Dr. Sherratt has co-authored two books, Improving Teacher Quality: A Guide for Education Leaders, and Everyone at the Table: Engaging Teachers in Evaluation Reform, both published by Jossey-Bass. She has been featured on NBC News, Fox News, The Washington Post, Teacher Talk Radio, Korea FM Talk Radio, Education Week, Educational Leadership, and other national news outlets.

Matthew Shirrell

Matthew Shirrell is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration at George Washington University. His research explores the relationships between policy, the social and organizational characteristics of schools and school systems, and learning, improvement, and teacher retention. In 2020-21, he was awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for his study of National Board-certified teachers’ roles in their colleagues’ learning and improvement. Dr. Shirrell’s work has been published in journals such as American Educational Research Journal, Sociology of Education, and Educational Administration Quarterly. A former elementary school teacher, he holds a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University, a M.S. in Early Childhood Education from Erikson Institute, and a B.A. in English from Grinnell College.

Elena Silva

Elena Silva is President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. She previously served as Senior Director of Education at New America, leading efforts to improve public education nationwide. She brings decades of experience across philanthropy, government, and nonprofit sectors improving education from early childhood through workforce development. Silva held leadership roles at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the American Association of University Women, and began her career managing youth programs for DC-based ASPIRA Association. Silva holds a PhD and MA in Education from UC Berkeley and a BA from UMass-Amherst.

Marcy Singer Gabella

Marcy Singer-Gabella is the Chief of Operations at the Learning Policy Institute (LPI). Before joining LPI in June 2024, Marcy was a Professor in the Department of Teaching & Learning at Vanderbilt University. Over the course of her career she has served in a range of leadership roles in university and K–12 settings—including as the founding faculty director of the Nashville Partnership for Educational Equity Research (Nashville PEER), and while on leave from the university, as Chief of Staff at Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools. The through line of her work has been a focus on building partnerships and capacity to provide equitable and empowering learning opportunities for all young people and the educators who serve them.

Marc Stein

Marc Stein is the executive director of the Improvement Collaboratory at Improving Education, a non-profit dedicated to using improvement science to help make educational opportunities a reality for all children. The CoLab pairs rigorous social science research, cutting-edge methodological and analytic approaches with a deep knowledge of education practice and systems to develop the methods of improvement science for application to real world educational problems. Prior to co-founding the CoLab, Marc was the managing director of the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) and an associate professor of education policy at Johns Hopkins University.

David Steiner

David Steiner is executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and professor of education at Johns Hopkins University. He recently served on the Maryland State Board of Education and the Maryland Commission for Innovation and Excellence in Education, and he is a board member of the Relay Graduate School of Education. Previously, Steiner was New York State commissioner of education, dean of the Hunter College School of Education, and director of education at the National Endowment for the Arts.

As commissioner, he led New York’s successful $700 million Race to the Top application, launching EngageNY, the nation’s most-used free online curriculum resource. He regularly consults with education leaders nationwide and is the author of A Nation at Thought (2023).

Marla Ucelli Kashyap

Marla Ucelli-Kashyap is Senior Director for Educational Issues at the 1.8 million-member AFT, where she serves as strategic advisor to President Randi Weingarten and leads a 30-person team working on key areas of policy, practice, technical assistance, and professional development aimed at helping teachers and their unions improve education quality and their profession.

Previously, Marla was Director of District Redesign and Leadership at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and a senior program officer at the Rockefeller Foundation. Early in her career, she served as senior education aide to New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean and assistant to Ernest L. Boyer, then President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Marla is a member of numerous boards and advisory groups; served multiple terms chairing the boards of the Learning First Alliance and Editorial Projects in Education. She was a member of the Education Agency Review Team for the Biden transition.

Chezare Warren

Chezare A. Warren, PhD is Associate Professor of Equity & Inclusion in Education Policy at Peabody College-Vanderbilt University, and principal investigator of The Possibilities Project—an “arts informed knowledge hub” established to advance, generate, and amplify evidence-based Black educational solutions. A former middle school math teacher and instructional coach from Chicago, Dr. Warren is recipient of numerous national recognitions including the Charles DeGarmo Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education to a scholar who is a “prominent and distinguished figure in American Education.” He is author or co-editor of four books including Centering Possibility in Black Education (Teachers College Press, 2021) and Urban Preparation (Harvard Education Press, 2017). Dr. Warren’s research has been published in top peer-reviewed journals including AERA Open, Educational Researcher, and Review of Educational Research.

Gema Zamarro

Gema Zamarro (Ph.D. Economics) is a Professor in Education Reform and Economics at the University of Arkansas and 21st Century Endowed Chair in Teacher Quality at the Department of Education Reform. Dr. Zamarro has performed research in the areas of education and labor economics. She has completed studies on heterogeneity in returns to education, teacher quality and student performance, the effect of school closing policies on student outcomes, the properties of teacher value-added methods, and the effects of dual-language immersion programs on student outcomes, among others. Her current research focuses on teacher labor markets, teacher recruitment and retention, teacher quality and teacher pensions issues, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Zamarro’s work has been featured numerous times in the media and has helped inform policy at the state, national, and international levels.

Please note, this conference is an invitation only event.

For questions, please contact schoolteacher50@gwu.edu.