Featured Speaker Bios

Ted Sizer
Ted Sizer is the founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools and the author of the three Horace books that describe CES's rationale and early years. He is professor emeritus at Brown University, where he served as chair of the education department from 1984-1989, and is currently a visiting professor at Harvard and Brandeis Universities. He and his wife Nancy recently served as the acting co-principals of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in Devens, Massachusetts. His latest book, What Is School: Convictions From Experience, will be published next year. He is also working on a second book, written jointly with Deborah Meier and Nancy Sizer, called On Keeping School: Letters to Parents.

Raymond Ramirez
Raymond Ramirez is currently a senior at the Boston Arts Academy, one of the Boston Pilot Schools, where he majors in theatre. A frequent performer, Raymond has played leading roles in a number of productions, including a professional production of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, in which he played five different characters. Currently a member of a new and upcoming theatre company, Raymond recently co-directed and co-wrote a play, Washington & Carter, that was performed at the Emerson High School Festival. This fall he will play several roles in the production of You Must Not Speak! The Language of Human Rights. Raymond hopes to pursue a career in theatre and film as he moves on to college.

Zawadi Harmon
Zawadi Harmon (previously Zawadi Powell) attended Central Park East Secondary School between 1986 and1992. During her time at CPESS, she created poetry, creative writing, and theatre pieces that are still used in the CPESS curriculum today. She went on to attend Brown University where she studied abroad in Ghana West Africa during her senior year. After graduating from Brown, she taught as a substitute teacher in several CES schools and played a major role in the creation of two new non-profit organizations. She is currently living in North Carolina with her husband and three children and will begin her graduate studies in social work at UNC Chapel Hill in the fall of 2004.

Mary Beth Blegen
Mary Beth Blegen is currently the blueprint coordinator for Saint Paul Public Schools as they move toward the creation of small learning communities in seven urban high schools. She is responsible for facilitating the change process and supporting teachers as they take responsibility for moving from the traditional model of high school to a more personalized, student-focused model. A veteran teacher of over 30 years, Mary Beth served as the first ever Teacher In Residence at the U.S. Department of Education and was named National Teacher of the Year in 1996. She has spoken with and listened to teachers all over the United States, and is passionate about developing teacher leadership and increasing the voice of teachers in decision-making.

Kothyn Evans-Alexander
Kothyn Evans-Alexander is presently the principal of a new Big Picture High School in the Chicago Public Schools. She expresses a passion for teaching, and although she has taught at the elementary, high school, and college levels, she continues to see herself as a life-long learner. She has served as an administrator in several urban school districts, including as a member of the Boston Pilot Schools Network and associate director at Fenway High School in Boston. Kothyn continues to be a catalyst for change in the quest for providing more innovative educational choices for all children, and is honored to share perspectives with practitioners who embark upon that same journey.

Tom Vander Ark
Tom Vander Ark is the executive director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's education initiative. The foundation is helping large, troubled high schools transform themselves into smaller, more personalized learning environments, while at the same time funding the replication of successful small school models. For the five years before he joined the foundation, Vander Ark served as a public school superintendent in one of Washington State's larger districts. He was one of the first superintendents recruited from the private sector to lead a public school district. Prior to leading Federal Way Public Schools, Vander Ark ran a consulting practice for Cap Gemini and was a senior executive for a $5 billion national retailer.

David Montes de Oca
David Montes de Oca is educational strategist (principal) at Urban Promise Academy, a middle school in Oakland, California. He is a founding member of the team of educators, families, and reformers who started this new, small, autonomous school as part of a movement throughout Oakland to create small learning communities and models of quality, equitable learning environments. David is also the executive director of the Urban Arts Academy after-school program, and is involved in addressing gang violence and preparing young urban warriors to advocate for non-violent alternatives in their communities. David and his team have focused on the use of constructivist listening structures as a vehicle to manifest relational power and change within their school and programs.

George Wood
George Wood is principal of Federal Hocking High School in rural Appalachian Ohio. A member of CES for over 10 years, FHHS has implemented a number of practices consistent with the Common Principles, including an advisory system, a portfolio graduation standard, a senior project, project-based teaching, student and staff decision-making, and a core curriculum. The author of A Time to Learn and Schools That Work, George founded the Institute for Democracy in Education and currently directs the Principal's Leadership Network for the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative, a project to break up large urban high schools in Ohio. George is also the Founding Director of Wildwood Secondary School, an independent school in Los Angeles that is also a CES member school.

Deborah Meier
Deborah Meier is currently the principal of Mission Hill Elementary School in Boston and vice-chair emerita of the Coalition of Essential Schools. She has spent more than three decades working in public education as a teacher, writer, and public advocate. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary and secondary schools in East Harlem and the founder-principal of Central Park East Secondary School. Meier is the author of The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem, Will Standards Save Public Education?, and In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization.

Linda Darling-Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she teaches education policy courses and oversees the teacher education programs. She was the founding executive director of the National Commission for Teaching and America's Future, the blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future" catalyzed major policy changes across the U.S. to improve the quality of teacher education and teaching. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of teaching and teacher education, school restructuring, and educational equity. Among her more than 200 publications is The Right to Learn, recipient of the AERA Outstanding Book Award in 1998.

Claudio Sanchez
Former elementary and middle school teacher Claudio Sanchez is education correspondent for National Public Radio, focusing on the "three p's" of education reform: politics, policy, and pedagogy. His reports air regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. In 1985, Sanchez received one of broadcasting's top honors, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, for a series he co-produced, "Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad." In addition, he has won the Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Best Spot News and the El Paso Press Club Award for Best Investigative Reporting, and was recognized for outstanding local news coverage by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.