Susan Sclafani

Founder Susan Sclafani Consulting, Former Assistant Secretary of Education

Susan K. Sclafani is a creative, high-energy, accomplished leader, manager, collaborator, and organizer in the educational arena at the local, state, national and international levels.

Andreas Schleicher

OECD Director for Education and Skills

Andreas Schleicher is Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris.

He initiated and oversees the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international instruments that have created a global platform for policy-makers, researchers and educators across nations and cultures to innovate and transform educational policies and practices.

He has worked for over 20 years with ministers and education leaders around the world to improve quality and equity in education. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that Schleicher “understands the global issues and challenges as well as or better than anyone I’ve met, and he tells me the truth” (The Atlantic, July 11). Former UK Secretary of State Michael Gove called Schleicher “the most important man in English education” – even though he is German and lives in France.

Before joining the OECD, he was Director for Analysis at the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA). He studied Physics in Germany and received a degree in Mathematics and Statistics in Australia. He is the recipient of numerous honours and awards, including the “Theodor Heuss” prize, awarded in the name of the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany for “exemplary democratic engagement”. He holds an honorary Professorship at the University of Heidelberg.

Eric Hanushek

Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is a recognized leader in the economic analysis of education issues, and his research has had broad influence on education policy in both developed and developing countries. He is the author of numerous widely-cited studies on the effects of class size reduction, school accountability, teacher effectiveness, and other topics. He was the first to research teacher effectiveness by measuring students’ learning gains, which formed the conceptual basis for using value-added measures to evaluate teachers and schools, now a widely adopted practice. His recent book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth summarizes his research establishing the close links between countries’ long-term rates of economic growth and the skill levels of their populations. His current research analyzes why some countries’ school systems consistently perform better than others. He has authored or edited twenty-four books along with over 250 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A. Lin Goodwin

Professor and Dean, the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong

A. Lin Goodwin is the Professor and Dean, the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong and formerly Evenden Professor of Education, and Vice Dean at Teachers College, Columbia University (TCCU). She is immediate past-Vice President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)—Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education (2013-2016), and is co-director (and architect) of a joint MA in Educational Leadership and Change between TCCU and the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. She is the recipient of two multi-million dollar federal grants to support TR@TC, an innovative teaching residency program at Teachers College that she designed and launched in 2009. In 2015, Dr. Goodwin was honored as a Distinguished Researcher by AERA’s Special Interest Group: Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans, and was also named the inaugural Dr. Ruth Wong Professor of Teacher Education, NIE.

Dr. Goodwin’s research focuses on teacher and teacher educator identities and deveopment; multicultural understandings and curriculum enactments; the particular issues facing Asian/Asian American teachers and students in U.S. schools; and on international analyses/comparisons of teacher education practice and policy. Her work appears in top education journals including the Journal of Teacher Education, Urban Education, International Journal of Educational Research, and Teachers College Record; she is the editor of several books. Recent publications include “Who is in the classroom now? Teacher preparation and the education of immigrant children,” in Educational Studies; and “Managing reform in teacher education” (with Kosnik and Beck), in The International Handbook of Teacher Education. Forthcoming is a new book: Empowered educators in Singapore: How high-performing systems shape teaching quality (with E.L. Low and L. Darling-Hammond); and “Educating all children in multicultural, multilingual Singapore: The quest for equity amidst diversity” (with E.L. Low), in The International Handbook of Urban Education.

Randy Bennett

Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation at ETS

Randy Bennett is Norman O. Frederiksen Chair in Assessment Innovation at ETS in Princeton, NJ. Since the 1980s, he has conducted research on integrating advances in cognitive science, technology, and measurement to create new approaches to assessment intended to have positive impact on teaching and learning. For his work, he was given the ETS Senior Scientist Award in 1996, the ETS Career Achievement Award in 2005, the Teachers College, Columbia University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2016, Fellow status in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2017, the National Council on Measurement in Education’s (NCME) Bradley Hanson Award for Contributions to Educational Measurement in 2019 (with H. Guo, M. Zhang, and P. Deane), and the E. F. Linquist Award from AERA and ACT in 2020.

From 1999 through 2005, Bennett directed the NAEP Technology Based Assessment project, which explored the use of computerized testing in NAEP. The project was the first to have administered computer-based performance assessments to nationally representative samples of school students, and to use logfile data in such samples to measure the processes used in problem solving.

From 2007 to 2016, Bennett directed an integrated research initiative titled, Cognitively-Based Assessment of, for, and as Learning (CBAL). This initiative focused on creating theory-based summative and formative assessment to support learning and instruction. The initiative contributed to such foundational results as the application of “theory of action” to assessment systems, and the learning progressions that underlie such innovative educational games as GlassLab’s Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy.

Randy Bennett is Past President of the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), which is primarily constituted of governmental and NGO measurement organizations throughout the world. He is also Past President of NCME, whose members are employed in universities, testing organizations, education departments, and school districts.