Bio

Gary Sykes is a Professor of Educational Administration and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. He specializes in educational policy relating to teaching and teacher education. His research interests center on policy issues associated with the improvement of teaching and teacher education, on the development of leadership preparation programs, and on educational choice as an emerging policy issue.

Barbara Schneider is a John A. Hannah University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education and Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. She holds research appointments at the University of Chicago and NORC, where she is Principal Investigator of the Data Research and Development Center (DRDC). She has published 12 books and over 100 articles and reports on family, social context of schooling, and sociology of knowledge. Professor Schneider is currently conducting a collaborative study with the Michigan Department of Education on using administrative data to make state education policy decision. She was selected by the American Sociological Association as the editor of Sociology of Education.

David N. Plank is Executive Director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an independent policy research center based at the University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California. He was previously a professor at Michigan State University, where he founded and directed the Education Policy Center. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1983. In addition to his work on education policy in the U.S., he has served as a consultant in the areas of educational policy and finance to international organizations including the World Bank, the UNDP, the OECD, USAID, and the Ford Foundation, and also to governments in Africa and Latin America.