VUE 22: Author Biographies

Voices in Urban Education

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Redesigning the “Central Office”
VUE Number 22, Winter 2009

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Author Biographies

Ellen Foley

Ellen Foley is an Associate Director, District Redesign and Leadership at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Assistant Clinical Professor, Master's in Urban Education Policy Program, Brown University. Ellen is responsible for leading the design of District Redesign and Leadership research studies and convenings from concept to product and for managing cross-functional internal teams and external consultants. She also leads the development and production of a variety of tools for district leaders, oversees research and evaluation related to national District Redesign and Leadership field work. She is an assistant clinical professor at Brown, teaching in the Master's in Urban Education Policy Program. Prior to joining the Institute, she was a research specialist at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, where she worked on the evaluation of Children Achieving, Philadelphia's districtwide education reform effort. Ellen holds a BA in political science from Boston College and an MSEd and doctorate in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary research interest is urban education, with a focus on the central office's role in leading reform efforts. She co-chairs the American Educational Research Association's Special Interest Group on Districts in Research and Reform.

> VUE 22 Article: Getting Smarter: A Framework for Districts

Mary Sylvia Harrison

Mary Sylvia Harrison is vice president of programs at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. Mary joined the Nellie Mae Education Foundation in July, 2008. She is the former President and CEO of The College Crusade of Rhode Island, which she joined in 1994. Under her leadership, The College Crusade became the state’s most comprehensive college-readiness and scholarship program for students in low-income urban school districts. Program participants have significantly outperformed their peers in the urban districts with regard to high school graduation and college-going rates. Ms. Harrison served on the Rhode Island Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education from 1994 to 1999 and represented The College Crusade as Core Partner with the Providence Public Schools in a Carnegie Corporation-funded High School Redesign initiative. Prior to joining The College Crusade, Ms. Harrison was for six years Executive Director of Times2, a non-profit organization that provided math and science enrichment programs for underserved learners. She holds a B.A. from Villanova University and a J.D. from Antioch School of Law.

> VUE 22 Article: Toward a “Relationship-Based Industry”: Connecting Central Offices and Communities

Meredith Honig

Meredith I. Honig is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Honig's research and teaching focus is on policy design, policy implementation, and organizational change in cities. She is particularly interested in how public policy making bureaucracies such as school district central offices manage ambiguity, complexity, and innovation. Prior to joining the University of Washington faculty, Honig was a policy and research specialist at the California Department of Education and worked in other state and local youth-serving agencies. Honig received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Administration and Policy Analysis with a specialization in Organizational Studies. At Washington, Dr. Honig teaches courses in policy design and implementation, organizational theory, and learning communities & educational organizations.

> VUE 22 Article: Urban School District Central Offices and the Implementation of New Small Autonomous Schools Initiatives

Andrew Moffit

Andrew Moffit is an associate principal with McKinsey & Company's Social Sector Office, based in Boston, and is a member of the global leadership team for its Education Practice. Moffit joined the firm in 2000 and has served clients in the financial services and nonprofit and public sectors on a wide range of strategic and organizational issues. Over the last few years, in partnership with several national foundations focused on education reform, Moffit has supported the ambitious reform efforts of multiple large urban districts and state education departments that aspire to markedly improve system performance and close achievement gaps. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, and was an elementary school teacher in Houston, Texas from 1991 to 1993 as a corps member of Teach For America. He also is a graduate of Oxford University and Yale Law School, having studied education law and policy at both institutions.

> VUE 22 Article: Redesigning the Central Office to Deliver Better Value

Robert Rothman

Robert Rothman is responsible for writing Annenberg Institute publications and editing the Institute's quarterly journal Voices in Urban Education, a "roundtable-in-print" designed to air diverse viewpoints and share new knowledge on vital issues in urban education. He has written for numerous education publications and organizations and was a reporter and editor for Education Week. He was also a senior project associate for Achieve, a study director for the National Research Council, and the director of special projects for the National Center on Education and the Economy. Bob holds a BA in political science from Yale University. He is the author of Measuring Up: Standards, Assessment and School Reform and numerous book chapters and articles on testing and education reform.

> VUE 22 Article: The New “Central Office”

David Sigler

David Sigler is a Principal Associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. David's work focuses on using the Institute's district redesign tools in site-based partnerships and on designing and testing new tools. He also examines issues of collective bargaining in education reform. Prior to joining the Institute, he spent five years with the New Teacher Project working on the organization's strategic partnerships with school districts and human resources departments nationally; two years placing and supporting teachers with Teach for America; and two years as a second-grade teacher with the District of Columbia Public Schools. David holds a BA in philosophy from Creighton University and an MA in moral and political philosophy from the University of Illinois. His primary focus is urban education reform, with concentrations on the role of teachers unions in school reform and the role of a school district's central office in leading reform efforts.

> VUE 22 Article: Getting Smarter: A Framework for Districts



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