Don Clerico
Don Clerico is the Director of Charleston Southern University’s Office of International Programs. He began his professional education career as a middle school social studies teacher in Florida before serving as a high school principal in Connecticut and a deputy superintendent in Maine; he then joined CSU’s education faculty in 1990. A two-time recipient of the university’s Teacher of the Year Award and the 2011 recipient of the Martin Luther King Award given by CSU’s African-American Student Society, Clerico believes that participation is crucial to learning. To that end he and a CSU colleague in 2002 launched the college’s first “Teaching & Learning in Ghana Program,” offering teachers and teacher candidates an opportunity to teach and observe in a very different culture. We are pleased to have him share his experiences with that program at the 2012 PDS National Conference.
Linda Darling-Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school reform, teacher quality, and educational equity. From 1994 to 2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching in the United States. In 2006, this report was named one of the most influential affecting U.S. education and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy over the last decade. In 2008-09, she headed President Barack Obama’s education policy transition team.
Among Darling-Hammond’s more than 300 publications are The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future (Teachers College Press, 2010); Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs (Jossey-Bass, 2006); Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do (with John Bransford; Jossey-Bass, 2005), winner of the AACTE Pomeroy Award; Teaching as the Learning Profession (co-edited with Gary Sykes; Jossey-Bass, 1999), which received the National Staff Development Council’s Outstanding Book Award for 2000; and The Right to Learn (Jossey-Bass,1997), recipient of the American Educational Research Association’s Outstanding Book Award for 1998. Among recent recognitions, she is recipient of the 2011 Brock International Prize in Education and the 2009 McGraw Hill Prize for Innovation in Education.
Dwight D. Jones
Dwight D. Jones serves as the superintendent of the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. He previously served as the Commissioner of Education for Colorado. Colorado has a combined enrollment of 860,000 students in 178 public school P-12 districts. During his tenure he helped rewrite the state’s content standards and is revising the state assessment; his administration has created a replicable longitudinal student growth model and streamlined the state’s accountability system. He also initiated the Schools of Innovation status, allowing schools to seek waivers from certain district requirements for greater autonomy.
Jones began his career as an elementary school teacher in Junction City, Kansas, before rising through the ranks as assistant principal, principal, and superintendent. He previously served as a superintendent and assistant superintendent for the Fountain-Fort Carson School District in Colorado, as operational vice president of Edison Schools in Maryland, Kansas, and Missouri; and as assistant superintendent of Wichita Public Schools in Kansas. Under his leadership the Fountain-Fort Carson School District was recognized as the number one district in the state for narrowing the achievement gap for low socioeconomic status and minority students. As the operational vice president for Edison Schools, he opened three reconstituted, 100-percent minority schools in Baltimore City, Maryland.
Jones is active with the Council for Chief State School Officers and, most recently, served as co-chair of NCATE’s Blue Ribbon Panel which produced the November 2010 report, “Transforming Teacher Education Through Clinical Practice: A National Strategy to Prepare Effective Teachers.”
