San Francisco Design Team Member Bios

Literacy and Language

Kenji Hakuta, Professor of Education, Stanford. Kenji is an experimental psycholinguist by training, best known for his work in the areas of bilingualism and the acquisition of English in immigrant students. He is the author of numerous research papers and books, including Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism (Basic Books, 1986) and In Other Words: The Science and Psychology of Second Language Acquisition (Basic Books, 1994). He chaired a National Academy of Sciences report, Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children (National Academy Press), and co-edited a book on affirmative action in higher education, Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education (Stanford University Press). Kenji is also active in the policy applications of his research. He has testified to Congress and other public bodies on a variety of topics, including language policy, the education of language minority students, affirmative action in higher education, and improvement of quality in educational research. He has served as an expert witness in education cases involving language minority students. Kenji received his BA Magna Cum Laude in Psychology and Social Relations, and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, both from Harvard University. He has been at Stanford as Professor of Education since 1989, except for three years (2003-2006) when he helped start the University of California at Merced as its Founding Dean of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.

Elizabeth Moje, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture in Educational Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Elizabeth's research interests revolve around the intersection between the literacies and texts youth are asked to learn in the disciplines (particularly in science and social studies) and the literacies and texts they experience outside of school. In addition, Elizabeth studies how youth make culture and enact identities from their home and community literacies, and from ethnic cultures, popular cultures, and school cultures. These research interests stem from the start of her career when she taught high school history, biology, and drama at schools in Colorado and Michigan.

Katherine Nielsen, Co-Director, Science and Health Education Partnership, UCSF. Katherine was a Science and Health Education Partnership (SEP) staff member from 1995 to 1997 and returned to SEP in 2001. During her initial tenure at SEP, Katherine was responsible for coordinating the Triad program. She has been the Science Instructor at Blackfeet Community College and has also taught science at the secondary level. Katherine holds a Masters Degree in Education from Stanford University and one in Biological Sciences from Montana State University.

Jonathan Osborne, Professor of Education, Stanford University. Jonathan is currently the California Chair for Science Education at Stanford University. His research focus is a mix of work on policy and pedagogy in the teaching and learning of science. In the policy domain, he is interested in exploring students' attitudes to science and how school science can be made more worthwhile and engaging - particularly for those who will not continue with the study of science. In pedagogy, his focus has been on making the case for the role of argumentation in science education both as a means of improving the use of a more dialogic approach to teaching science and improving student understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry. Jonathan has led one major project on ‘Enhancing the Quality of Argument in School Science Education.’ From this his team developed the IDEAS (Ideas, Evidence and Argument in Science Education) materials to support teacher professional learning. Jonathan holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Physics from Bristol University, a Masters in Astrophysics from Queen Mary College, and a PhD in Education from King’s College.

P. David Pearson, Dean of the Graduate School of Education; Professor, Language and Literacy, Society and Culture, University of California, Berkeley. David Pearson's research interests include practice and policy in literacy instruction and assessment. A member of the National Academy of Education, he is a former dean of the College of Education of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also co-directed the Center for the Study of Reading. Before coming to Berkeley he was the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Education at Michigan State University. He has served as president of the National Reading Conference and on the boards of directors for the International Reading Association, the National Reading Conference, and the Association of American Colleges of Teacher Education. His honors include the William S. Gray Citation of Merit from the International Reading Association, the Oscar Causey Award for Contributions to Reading Research from the National Reading Conference, and the Alan Purves Award from the National Council of Teachers of English. Among his books and articles are the Handbook of Reading Research, now in its third volume; and Learning to Read: Lessons for Effective Schools and Accomplished Teachers (with B. Taylor, 2000).

Math

Harold Asturias, Lawrence Hall of Science. Harold Asturias is the director of the Center for Mathematics Excellence and Equity (CeMEE) at the Lawrence Hall of Science. Before that, he was the Deputy Director of the Mathematics and Science Professional Development at the University of California Office of the President. Previously, he served as the Director of the New Standards Portfolio Assessment Project and the Mathematics Unit for New Standards. In that capacity he led the development team of experts whose efforts, involving many states and over a thousand teachers, resulted in the successful production of two assessment systems: the New Standards Portfolio and the Reference Examination. In addition, he was part of the team that produced the New Standards Performance Standards.

Mr. Asturias was a member of the writing group for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Assessment Standards for School Mathematics. He has extensive experience providing professional development in the areas of standards and assessment in mathematics for teachers in large urban districts (Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City) and smaller districts. Over the past few years he has focused in the area of designing and implementing professional development for K- 12 California mathematics teachers who teach English Language Learners.

Phil Daro, SERP, is a member of the lead writing team for the K-12 Common Core State Standards, senior fellow for Mathematics of America’s Choice, and director of the San Francisco Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP)—a partnership of UC Berkeley, Stanford and the San Francisco Unified School District. He previously served as executive director of The Public Forum on School Accountability, as director of the New Standards Project (leader in standards and standards-based test development), and as director of Research and Development for the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE). He also directed large-scale teacher professional development programs for the University of California including the California Mathematics Project and the American Mathematics Project, and has held leadership positions within the California Department of Education. Phil has been a Trustee of the Noyce Foundation since 2005.

David Foster, Program Director, Robert Noyce Foundation. David has been the Director of the Noyce Foundation's mathematics program, the Silicon Valley Math Initiative, for 10 years. He is Co-Director of the Santa Clara Valley Math Project and Co-Chair of the advisory committee of the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service published by CTB-McGraw Hill. David is the senior author of Interactive Mathematics published by Glencoe-McGraw Hill. He was formerly a Regional Director for the Middle Grades Mathematics Renaissance, the mathematics component of the California Alliance for Math and Science, and he was a founding member of the California Math Project Advisory Committee and the California Coalition for Mathematics. He joined the Noyce Foundation in 1996, and works in the Morgan Hill office.

Alan Schoenfeld, Professor, Cognition and Development, U.C. Berkeley. Alan's research deals with thinking, teaching, and learning, with an emphasis on mathematics. His book Mathematical Problem Solving characterizes what it means to “think mathematically” and describes a research-based undergraduate course in mathematical problem solving. He led the Balanced Assessment project, which developed alternative assessments for K-12 mathematics curricula, and has worked on modeling the process of teaching. His current research focuses on issues of equity and diversity in mathematics education. Alan is a senior advisor to the Educational Human Resources Directorate of the National Science Foundation, and has served as senior content advisor to the What Works Clearinghouse.

Alan was lead author for grades 9-12 of the National Council of Teachers' of Mathematics Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. He was one of the founding editors of Research in Collegiate Mathematics Education, and has served as associate editor of Cognition and Instruction. He is a principal investigator in the Diversity in Mathematics Education (DiME) Center on the Berkeley campus.

Uri Treisman, Professor of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin; Director of the Charles A Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His research and professional interests include mathematics and science education, education policy, and community service and volunteerism. Uri serves as the executive director of the Texas Center for Mathematics Educator Development and of the Texas Office for the Education of Homeless Youth and Children. He is a founding board member of AVID and of the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education. Uri chairs the Chancellor's Advisory Board for Mathematics in NYC and the steering committee of the Urban Mathematics Leadership Network. He also serves as the Chief Juror for a Department of Defense-sponsored study of mobility in military families and its effects on their children's education. Uri is active in creating support structures for volunteer-based and community-based organizations. He served as the vice-chair of the Governor's Commission for Volunteerism and Community Service under Governors Richards and Bush. In all his work, he is an advocate for equity and excellence in education for all children.

Science

Bruce Alberts, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF); Chairman, Strategic Education Research Partnership Institute. Bruce is a respected biochemist with a strong commitment to the improvement of science and mathematics education. He has returned to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, after serving two six-year terms as the president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

During his tenure at the NAS, Bruce was instrumental in developing the landmark National Science Education standards that have been implemented in school systems nationwide. The type of “science as inquiry” teaching we need, says Bruce, emphasizes “logical, hands-on problem solving, and it insists on having evidence for claims that can be confirmed by others. It requires work in cooperative groups, where those with different types of talents can discover them - developing self confidence and an ability to communicate effectively with others.”

Bruce is also noted as one of the original authors of The Molecular Biology of the Cell, a preeminent textbook in the field now in its fourth edition. For the period 2000 to 2009, he serves as the co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, a new organization in Amsterdam governed by the presidents of 15 national academies of sciences and established to provide scientific advice to the world, and the president-elect of the American Society of Cell Biology.

Dennis Bartels, Executive Director, Exploratorium. Dennis is a nationally known science education and policy expert. He holds a Ph.D. in Education Administration and Policy Analysis from Stanford University. He also has the distinction of being named a Fellow on Education by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his leadership in systemic science education reform, information science education, and research and development of innovative mathematics, science, and technology curricula.

Before taking on the role of Exploratorium Executive Director, Dennis served for five years as President of TERC (Technical Education Research Centers), a leading national mathematics, science, and technology education research and development center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In that capacity, he oversaw an $18 million yearly budget, $32 million in ongoing grants, and a staff of 140 engaged in developing award-winning products, tools, and curricula for students and teachers in K-12 classrooms. He was also instrumental in establishing a successful and innovative Masters Degree program, offered online for elementary and middle school science teachers across the U.S. and abroad.

For five years prior to his work at TERC, Dennis was the Director of the Exploratorium's own Center for Learning and Teaching, where he directed educational programming and was responsible for the establishment of Exhibit-Based Teaching Partnerships programs in science centers around the world, including in Beijing, China. He directed a statewide education reform initiative at the South Carolina Department of Education, funded by the National Science Foundation, and worked with the University of California on school improvement efforts and other collaborative programs with the California State University and California Department of Education.

Katherine Nielson, Co-Director, Science and Health Education Partnership, UCSF. Katherine was a Science and Health Education Partnership (SEP) staff member from 1995 to 1997 and returned to SEP in 2001. During her initial tenure at SEP, Katherine was responsible for coordinating the Triad program. She has been the Science Instructor at Blackfeet Community College and has also taught science at the secondary level. Katherine holds a Masters Degree in Education from Stanford University and one in Biological Sciences from Montana State University

Helen R. Quinn, Professor of Physics, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Helen is a theoretical physicist who was inducted into the National Academies in 2003. She served as the president of the American Physical Society in 2004. In addition to her scholarship in physics, Helen has had a long-term involvement in science education and in the continuing education of science teachers. She was an active contributor to the California State Science Standards development process. She is a former president and founder of the non-profit Contemporary Physics Education Project. She served as a member of the recent NRC Science Learning Committee and earlier on the Federal Coordinating Committee on Science, Mathematics and Technology Education. Helen is currently chairing another BOSE committee that is reviewing NASA Science Education programs. She received a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University in 1967.

Linda Shore, Director of Teacher Institute, The Exploratorium. Linda has conducted educational research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, taught astronomy at Boston University, evaluated educational software, and helped design a high school curriculum on fractals in nature. She is a co-author of The Science Explorer, a series of Exploratorium activity books for children and their parents. Linda earned her master's degree in physics from San Francisco State University and her doctorate in Science Education from Boston University.

Rebecca Smith, Co-Director, Science & Health Education Partnership, UCSF.  She develops and implements programs that partner UCSF scientist volunteers with San Francisco public school teachers to support high quality science education for the students in San Francisco. Dr. Smith has been on the staff of SEP since 2000.  Prior to joining SEP, Rebecca completed her doctoral studies in Biochemistry at UCSF.

Elizabeth Stage, Director, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley. Prior to coming to LHS, Elizabeth directed the Mathematics Professional Development Institutes under the Office of the President of the University of California. She has worked to increase opportunities for all students to learn worthwhile mathematics and science. Her national service includes Director of Critique and Consensus at the NRC's National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment. She is president-elect of the National Center for Science Education, an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a former member and chair of the California Curriculum Commission. She serves as an expert in student assessment with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international organization helping governments tackle the economic, social, and governance challenges of a global economy. In 1996 she won the Smith College Medal. Elizabeth holds an Ed.D. in Science Education and a M.Ed., both from Harvard University, and an A.B. in Chemistry from Smith College.

Barbara White, Professor, Cognition and Development, U.C. Berkeley. Barbara is concerned with making science interest accessible to a wide range of students. Her research focuses on investigating the nature of scientific expertise, and on developing new instructional approaches and technologies. Her work involves modeling scientific understanding, inquiry, and problem solving. She uses models to create intelligent, computer-based, learning environments that support scientific inquiry. Her publications include “A Theoretical Framework and Approach for Fostering Metacognitive Development,” in Educational Psychologist (with J. Frederiksen, 2005); “Inquiry, Modeling, and Metacognition: Making Science Accessible to All Students” (with J. Frederiksen, 1998), an article to which the journal Cognition and Instruction devoted a special issue; “Intermediate Causal Models: A Missing Link for Successful Scientific Education?” in Advances in Instructional Psychology, Vol. 4 (1993); “ThinkerTools: Causal Models, Conceptual Change, and Science Education,” in Cognition and Instruction (1993); and “Causal Model Progressions as a Foundation for Intelligent Learning Environments,” in Artificial Intelligence (with J. Frederiksen, 1990).

Assessment

Mark Wilson, Professor, Policy, Organization, Measurement, and Evaluation: Cognition and Development, U.C. Berkeley. Mark's interests focus on measurement and applied statistics. His work spans a range of issues in measurement and assessment from the development of new statistical models for analyzing measurement data, to the development of new assessments in subject matter areas such as science education, patient-reported outcomes and child development, to policy issues in the use of assessment data in accountability systems. He has recently published three books: the first, Constructing measures: An item response modeling approach (Erlbaum), is an introduction to modern measurement; the second (with Paul De Boeck of the University of Leuven in Belgium), Explanatory item response models: A generalized linear and nonlinear approach (Springer-Verlag), introduces an overarching framework for the statistical modeling of measurements that makes available new tools for understanding the meaning and nature of measurement; the third, Towards coherence between classroom assessment and accountability (University of Chicago Press-National Society for the Study of Education), is an edited volume that explores the issues relating to the relationships between large-scale assessment and classroom-level assessment. He currently chairs a National Research Council committee on assessment of science achievement. He is founding editor of the new journal, Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives.

Rich Shavelson, Margaret Jacks Professor of Education, Professor of Psychology (by courtesy); Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for the Environment, Stanford. Rich's research spans and integrates (science) learning, teaching and assessment (including "psychometrics") and publishes on these topics as well as various aspects of measurement and validity theory. His work focuses on the measurement of individual and group performance in education and work, including such projects as alternatives to multiple-choice achievement tests in assessing science and mathematics understanding. He also conducts research on statistical models underlying the measurement of performance. His current work involves the study of accountability and assessment in higher education.

Research Design

Ed Haertel, Professor of Education; Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, Stanford. Ed is an expert in the area of educational testing and assessment. He looks at ways teachers and policymakers use and interpret tests, including uses that go beyond the accurate measurement of ability and achievement. He is currently examining evidence of different responses by teachers in high-resource versus low-resource classrooms to the pressures of external accountability testing.

Susanna Loeb, Associate Professor of Education, Stanford. Susanna specializes in the economics of education, and the relationship between schools and federal, state and local policies. She studies school finance reform, and specifically how the structure of state finance systems affects the level and distribution of funds to districts. She also looks at the teacher labor market and how changing job opportunities for women college graduates affects the pool of potential teachers.

District and School Organizations

Anthony Bryk, President; The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Tony believes that more effective solutions can arise here by harnessing the interests and expertise that exist between the schools of Education and Business.

Tony held the Spencer Chair in Organizational Studies in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. His main areas of expertise are school organization, education reform, and educational statistics.

Tony's current research is on the management of school improvement at scale. He is interested in innovations in the research and development infrastructure in education to support such improvement. He is especially focused on how new technologies can add value to efforts at promoting more ambitious teaching and learning in schools, K-12. He has been engaged in a variety of projects around the restructuring of large urban districts and the start up of charter schools and charter management organizations. He also continues a line of empirical work on new applications of hierarchical linear models to inform educational policy and practice.

In his former position as the Marshall Field IV Professor of Urban Education and Sociology at the University of Chicago, he was the Founding Director of the Center for Urban School Improvement which supports reform efforts within the Chicago Public Schools and launched the University's professional development charter school in the North Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood. Tony is also the Founding Director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research, a federation of Chicago-area research organizations that undertakes a range of studies designed to advance school improvement and assess the progress of Chicago school reform. The Consortium has developed a national representation for its twin missing of conducting high-quality research on urban school reform coupled with an activist public informing about these research findings.

Cynthia Coburn, Associate Professor, Policy, Organization, Measurement, and Evaluation, U.C. Berkeley. Cynthia uses the tools of organizational sociology to understand the relationship between instructional policy and teachers' classroom practices in urban schools. She has studied these issues in the context of state and national reading policy, attempts to scale-up innovative school reform programs, and district-wide professional development initiatives. Current projects include a study of the role of school leaders in mediating between reading policy and teachers' classroom practice. The study brings an analysis of power, authority, and knowledge into scholarship on teachers' interpretation of instructional policy. She also co-directs a cross-case study of innovative efforts to reconfigure the relationship between research and practice for school improvement. As part of that project, she studies an effort to redesign school districts to foster evidence-based practice and decision making. Finally, she is engaged in a study of the role of teachers' social networks in the scale-up of ambitious mathematics curricula in two urban districts.

Cynthia was the recipient of a Spencer Foundation national dissertation fellowship in 1999, won the 2002 Award for Outstanding Dissertation from Division L (policy and politics) of the American Educational Research Associations, and received the 2006 Palmer O. Johnson Award for outstanding publication from the American Educational Research Association for her research on non-system actors and reading policy. Recent work has been published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Sociology of Education, and Educational Policy. At Berkeley, she teaches Ph.D. students in POME and school and district leaders in the Joint Doctoral Program for Educational Equity and Leadership.

Milbrey McLaughlin, Professor of Education and Public Policy; Director, The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities; Director, Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, Stanford. Milbrey's research combines studies of K-12 education policy in the U.S and work on the broad question of community-school collaboration to support youth development. Her research on public education focuses on how school teaching is shaped by "context" issues such as organizational policy, social-cultural conditions of the schools, districts and communities. Within communities, she is involved with local efforts to engage whole communities - schools, community organizations and agencies, parents, faith-based institutions - in developing new strategies and capacity to promote youth development broadly considered. Milbrey is Co-Director of the Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, an education research center that analyzes how teaching and learning are shaped by their contexts and the connection between teacher learning communities and educational reforms. She is Director of the John Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities, a partnership between Stanford University and Bay Area communities to build new practices, knowledge and capacity for youth development and learning.

Rick Mintrop, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, U.C. Berkeley. Rick was a teacher in both the United States and Germany before he entered into his academic career. He received an MA in Political Science and German Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin (1978) and a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University (1996). As a researcher, he explores how educational policies form institutional structures that in turn shape teaching and learning in schools. He is particularly interested in the tension between student achievement and citizenship, accountability and democratization. He examined these relationships, first, in eastern German schools that underwent fundamental changes after the collapse of socialism. A number of articles and a book Educational Change and Social Transformation (Falmer 1996), published with Hans Weiler and Elisabeth Fuhrmann, resulted from this work. He co-authored (with Bruno Losito, CEDE, Italy) The Teaching of Civic Education, a chapter in the IEA Report on Civic Education (IEA 2001) that looks at the conditions of Civic Education teaching in 28 countries. In recent years, Rick has turned to the issue of school accountability and the “fixing” of “failing schools.” This work has so far produced a number of articles and book chapters on the fate of school improvement in schools on probation in the states of Maryland and Kentucky. Rick work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Spencer Foundation, and the August Thyssen Foundation, Germany. He was recently awarded a Carnegie Corporation scholarship to study school accountability systems comparatively in the United States and Germany. He is also currently undertaking a study of the California school accountability system. At UCLA, Rick is on the leadership team for the Principal Leadership Institute.

SFUSD (others will be added as they become available)

Jeanne D'Arcy, Supervisor, Mathematics and Science, SFUSD.

Dee Dee Desmond, Executive Director, Coaching and Leadership for Equity, SFUSD.

Deborah Farkas, Content Specialist, Middle School Science, SFUSD.

Ritu Khanna, Executive Director, Research, Planning, and Accountability, SFUSD. Ritu has served in the San Francisco Unified School District for the last twelve years in the Department of Research, Planning and Accountability. She is currently the Executive Director of the Department of Research, Planning and Accountability. The Research, Planning and Accountability Department is responsible for implementing a comprehensive accountability system in the San Francisco District and County. The primary objective is to provide data, interpret data, and support data-driven decision making by school administrators and teachers for the improvement of teaching and learning throughout the district. The department produces "data-on-demand" for the Board, administrators, principals, central office staff and community and provides in-depth professional development to support informed decision-making. Also, the department is responsible for implementing state and district assessments and supports schools in understanding the state and district assessments, in effectively administering the assessments, and in accurately analyzing and using the results from the assessments to improve instruction. Its Research and Evaluation Office monitors the data requirements for state and federal reporting, prepares school accountability report cards, approves research proposals, and evaluates special programs and grants which have been implemented in the district.

Ritu received her doctorate degree in education from Southern Illinois University with a specialization in statistics and measurement. She has also earned two masters degrees, one in Educational Psychology and another in Industrial Psychology. She also maintains a part time faculty position in the Educational Leadership program at St. Mary's College teaching Research and Statistics to students pursuing their Masters and Doctorate degrees.

Ritu has published and presented papers at local, state and national conferences. Most of her presentations were in the area of school accountability and administrators understanding data and were presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conferences. Ritu has also earned awards in the area of research during her career and has been a member of honor societies and national/international educational organizations.

Mary Louise Newling, Supervisor, Standard English Learners, SFUSD.

Jeannie Pon, Assistant Superintendent, Middle Schools, SFUSD.

SERP

Tina Cheuk, Assistant Field Site Director

Phil Daro, Field Site Director

Suzanne Donovan, is the founding director of the SERP Institute. Previous to SERP's independence, she directed the SERP project at the National Academy of Sciences, and co-edited the two SERP reports: Strategic Education Research Partnership, and Learning and Instruction: A SERP Research Agenda. Between 2000 and 2005 she was study director for the National Research Council's How People Learn project, and co-edited two reports: How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, and How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom. She was also study director and coeditor of Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education, and co-edited Eager to Learn: Educating our Preschoolers. Before moving to Washington, DC, she was on the faculty at Columbia University. She has a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Yan Liu, Assistant Director for Field Site Research

Juliana Pare-Blagoev, Assistant Director