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Bob Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and previously taught at Villanova and served in government in the Clinton years. With others including his wife April, he has produced 11 scholarly books which have sold dozens of copies, including President Obama and Education Reform and The Politically Correct University. He is now working on a book on KIPP, and another on Arizona charter schools. His bosses, Tony and Maya, attend public schools in Fayetteville.

Deborah has been committed to transforming the lives of underserved urban school students for more than four decades. In 1993, Deborah became the first public school superintendent to join EdisonLearning (formerly Edison Schools). There, she held numerous positions at the company, including President of Edison Teachers College, Executive Vice President of Charter Schools, and Executive Vice President of several external relations functions.

Prior to joining EdisonLearning, Deborah served as the first female General Superintendent of Detroit Public Schools. Crain’s Detroit Business named her Newsmaker of the Year for 1992. Before that, she was the first female Assistant Superintendent in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the first female Deputy Superintendent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was a teacher and administrator in the New York City Public Schools for more than a decade.

Deborah is former President of the Education Industry Association. In addition to serving on the boards of several high-performing charter management organizations, she is the Chair of the board of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and Beyond 12. She serves on the executive committee of the Policy Innovators in Education Network, and is a founder and national board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. She also serves on the advisory board of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and is a member of the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education.

Deborah holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Norfolk State University, a master’s degree in education with a specialization in reading pedagogy from Queens College of the City University of New York, and a doctorate in Administration, Policy and Urban Education from Fordham University.

Ted Kolderie has worked on questions of system design in various areas of public life. Through the 1960s and into the ’70s this was in urban and metropolitan affairs and public finance, when Minnesota generated a series of important ‘institutional innovations’. After that, he worked on more general questions about the structure of the public sector and its redesign.

In the 1980s as ‘education’ came into the policy discussion he was involved in the design and enactment of Minnesota’s chartering legislation in 1991; then in the discussion about chartering in 20 or more states. In 2004 he published “Creating the Capacity for Change: How and Why Governors and Legislatures are Opening a New-Schools Sector in Public Education”. With Joe Graba he co-founded Education Evolving to be a nonpartisan, non commercial, non-governmental and non-academic policy group working broadly on the strategy for change and improvement in K-12, in Minnesota and nationally. In 2011 he received the Conant award from the Education Commission of the States for his contributions to education policy.

A native of Omaha NE he graduated from Carleton College and from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton University. He was successively a reporter and editorial writer for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, executive director of the Twin Cities Citizens League and a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He lives in Saint Paul MN.

In 2005, David Hardy had a vision of starting an all-boys charter school to address the unique academic and social needs of urban boys. Two years later, his vision became a reality when Boys’ Latin welcomed its inaugural class under Mr. Hardy’s leadership. By 2008, Mr. Hardy had led the total transformation of a former Catholic school and church into one of the most modern, state-of-the-art school facilities in the region.

Mr. Hardy’s experience includes 19 years as a teacher and administrator at Community Academy of Philadelphia Charter School. Mr. Hardy is a nationally recognized authority on charter school education and school facility financing. He has been a presenter and advisor for multiple education and school facilities conferences and coalitions

Mike is the director of the Education Intelligence Agency and has covered the education beat since 1993. Education Week called him “the nation’s leading observer — and critic — of the two national teachers’ unions and their affiliates.” Mike’s writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Daily News, Education Next, and many other periodicals, and his work has been favorably cited in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post, and a host of other prominent daily newspapers. He has performed hundreds of radio interviews and appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor.

Mike was previously a military historian. His article on the diplomacy of the Byzantine Empire is included in Annual Editions: Western Civilization, Volume 1 by William Hughes, published by Dushkin/McGraw Hill. His article on codebreaking in the Civil War was published as a cover story by Civil War Times Illustrated and in Spies and Secret Missions: A History of American Espionage. He has had feature articles published in Military History, The Foreign Service Journal, History Today, Command, Wild West and many others.

He collaborated with U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo & Joseph Farah on the critically acclaimed book This Land Is Our Land: How to Win the War Against Private Property and conducted research for Dr. Daniel Pipes for his book The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, both published by St. Martin’s Press in 1996.

He received the Carol Applegate Education Award in 2004 from the National Right to Work Committee.

Mike has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communications from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and a Master of Arts in International Affairs from California State University at Sacramento. A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Mike logged more than 2,200 flying hours as an instructor navigator of C-130 transport aircraft and T-43 training aircraft.