Dixie J. Allen was appointed to the Ohio House in January 1998 and was elected to the position in November 1998, 2000, 2002 and again in November 2004. Her special committee appointments included the Minority Development Financing Advisory Board, the Legislative Information System Committee and the Tobacco Use Prevention & Control Foundation Board of Trustees.
Paul Powell is the Founding Principal of True North Troy Prep, soon to be in its fifth year of operation. Before becoming Founding Principal at Troy Prep, Paul served as Principal Resident at True North Rochester Prep where he taught 6th grade Math Procedures and served as a member of the leadership team. Prior to working with Uncommon Schools, Paul spent two years as a Program Director with Teach For America New York City, managing and training secondary math and science teachers throughout several boroughs of the city. Paul also worked at the 2005 Philadelphia Institute as a Corps Member Advisor. He started his teaching career as a L.A. corps member where he taught high school math at Locke Senior High and was named a Sue Lehmann Regional Finalist. Paul received his M.A. in Secondary Education from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and his B.A. in Mathematics from Goucher College where he is also a trustee.
Kenneth L. Campbell, a founding board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), has served as president of the organization since January 2010. Since 2000, BAEO has worked to increase access to high-quality educational options for Black children by supporting parental choice policies and programs that empower low-income and working-class Black families. Previously, Campbell led Louisiana’s charter school efforts as the founding director of charter schools at the Louisiana Department of Education. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he helped engineer the rebuilding of New Orleans’s education infrastructure through charter schools and implemented innovative strategies to transform failing schools across the state into higher performing charter schools. Campbell began his career in education reform in Washington, D.C, helping to secure passage of the District’s landmark charter school law. He later founded the D.C. Charter School Resource Center, which cultivated school founders and leaders and helped to foster an environment where charter schools could succeed.
Jeanne Allen, Founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, is considered one of the nation’s most accomplished and relentless advocates for education reform, and a recognized expert, speaker and author in the field. She founded the Center for Education Reform (CER) in 1993 and leads the nationwide fight to ensure that the innovation, freedom, flexibility and parent power become the foundation for all schooling in the US.
Jeanne counsels a number of entrepreneurial education and technology companies, including HotChalk, Inc., CommonLit, and the Modern States Education Alliance. Major ed tech investors and accelerators, including 1776 and GSV Labs, count Jeanne as one of their key mentors. She serves on several boards, including the Washington Leadership Academy in Washington, DC and the Challenge Charter School in Chandler, AZ.
The Education Industry Association honored Jeanne with its “Friend of Education Award” in 2012. Additional honors include Working Mother’s “Most Powerful Moms in Education” and the Black Alliance for Educational Options Champion Award in 2013.
A frequent commentator in television and media, Jeanne has also published hundreds of articles and commentaries in newspapers and journals and as well as her own blog, Reality Check-In. Her honesty and linear thinking on issues such as reform, choice for parents, and teacher accountability has made her articles in outlets such as The Huffington Post essential reading. Her book, The School Reform Handbook: How to Improve Your Schools (1995) ignited parent-led efforts for education reform and her latest publication Education Reform: Before it Was Cool (2014) documents critical milestones during her work over the past 20-plus years.
Jeanne has been a trusted advisor to presidential administrations, governors, and lawmakers, and continues to provide valuable counsel to policymakers, philanthropists and her colleagues in education. She began her career on Capitol Hill and was a senior official in the US Department of Education from 1983-1988. She earned a bachelors degree in political science from Dickinson College and a masters of science in education entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania.
Among her charitable and civic work, Jeanne is on the Leadership Council of the National Italian American Foundation, is a Dame of Malta, and an active member of the John Carroll Society. When time permits, she enjoys visiting the village of her family’s origin in Campania, Italy and time on the water, especially with her husband Dr. Kevin Strother, an educator, musician and charter boat captain. Her four young adult children are in various stages of school and work, some not surprisingly in the education reform arena.
Chalk Talk:
“Chalk Talk – Show Us The Data (April, 2009)”
“Chalk Talk – Biting the Apple on D.C. Choice (April, 2009)”
“Chalk Talk – Extraordinary (February, 2009)”
“Chalk Talk – Reflections on Election Eve (November, 2008)”
“Chalk Talk – A Senior’s Brave New World (August, 2008)”
“Chalk Talk – Whose Attention Deficit? (February, 2008)”
“Chalk Talk – Back-to-School Lesson from A College-Bound Kid (September, 2007)”
“Chalk Talk – Ode to Bethesda (August, 2007)”
“Chalk Talk – New York Charter School Fight Takes to Broadway (March, 2007)”
“Chalk Talk – Education Reform Action Hereos: Results (January, 2007)”
“Chalk Talk – Who Are the Real Action Heroes of Education? (January, 2007)”
“Chalk Talk – A Nobel Winner by All Accounts: Remembering Milton Friedman (November, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – Understanding School Choice Through the Eyes of Our Children (September, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – HOT! HOT! HOT! Politics Heats Up (August, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – Tapping Better Teachers to Turn Out Better Students (May, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – What’s in a Word? Reckoning with Charters and Oprah (May, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – American Progress Requires a New Focus on Competitiveness – In All Arenas (February, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – Why Mommy and Daddy Can’t Read – Public Education’s Crisis and The Stockholm Syndrome (January, 2006)”
“Chalk Talk – Hardly a Blow to Reform – Why California Voters Really Rejected Teacher Reforms (November, 2005)”
“Chalk Talk – Wal-Mart 1; Teachers Unions 0 (August, 2005)”
“Chalk Talk – Seeing Red: On Unions, Self-Esteem and Falling Behind (June, 2005)”
“Chalk Talk – Charter School Holy Wars (April 25, 2005)”
“Chalk Talk – Educating on School Choice (February 14, 2005)”
“Chalk Talk – State of the Union (February 3, 2005)”
“Chalk Talk – Joy to the World or Bah Humbug! – Your Choice (December 14, 2004)”
“Chalk Talk – R-55 and Charter Schools in Washington: Where Do We Go From Here? (November 23, 2004)”
“Chalk Talk – Margaret Spellings to Bring Knowledge, Discipline to Education Reform (November 17, 2004)”
“Chalk Talk – Fightin’ Words: Why Secretary Paige, and the Nation, Deserve Better (February 24, 2004)”
“Chalk Talk – The “Disarray Perception”: On the Charter School World’s Leadership (February 10, 2004)”
Michael Horn is a co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and serves as the executive director of its education program. He leads a team that educates policymakers and community leaders on the power of disruptive innovation in the K-12 and higher education spheres through its research. His team aims to transform monolithic, factory-model education systems into student-centric designs that educate every student successfully and enable each to realize his or her fullest potential. In 2008, Michael co-authored the award winning Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson. Newsweek cited the book 14th on its list of “Fifty Books for Our Times.” Michael has written several white papers about blended learning and is coeditor with Frederick Hess of the book Private Enterprise and Public Education. He has also written articles for numerous publications including Forbes, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Huffington Post, and Education Week. He testifies regularly at state legislative sessions and is a frequent keynote speaker at education conferences and planning sessions around the U.S. Tech&Learning magazine named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education. In addition, he serves on a variety of boards, including as an executive editor of Education Next, a journal of opinion and research about education policy; and he sits on the boards of Fidelis, inBloom, and the Silicon Schools Fund. Michael is also a member of the Education Innovation Advisory Board at Arizona State University and is a member of the advisory committee for The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. Michael holds a BA in history from Yale University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Serving in her sixth term in the Georgia House of Representatives, Alisha Thomas Morgan is a full-time lawmaker and full-time advocate for students. Throughout her career, she’s challenged traditional thinking on education, working for common sense solutions with democrats and republicans alike. An education expert in her own right, she consults for the U.S. Department of Education and served on the House Education Committee and Innovation Subcommittee on Education, Appropriations and Health and Human Services. She is the recipient of the Legislative Leadership Award from the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, Champion for Choice Award from the American Federation for Children, the BAEO Champion award, the Keeping Kids First Award from the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, the Friend of Education Award from the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the Impact Award by the Georgia Charter Schools Association. She has been quoted by the New York Times, Washington Post, and CSPAN, and featured in Ebony Magazine’s “Nation’s 30 Leaders Under 30”, AOL Black Voices’ “America’s Young Civil Rights Heroes”, and Essence Magazine’s fifteen women of the “New Power Generation”. But Alisha’s most important qualification as a lawmaker and an education reformer is being a proud parent whose daughter just began first grade in Cobb County Public Schools.
