Blogger Summit

School board member whose blog was shut down
Panelist: Blogging from the Trenches

Dave Ash is a retired Army /Navy veteran. His introduction to blogging evolved while campaigning for election for a position on his local school board in 2000.  After being elected, Ash searched for ways to communicate with his constituents on the Web. His educational background went from high school dropout to attending Ventura Community College in Ventura, Calif., Los Angeles Pierce College and Cal-State, Northridge. Ash raised his two sons and their engagement in video games helped keep him abreast of the changing technologies evolving in the 21st century as they relate to education.

Educator, blogs as "teacherken" on DailyKos
Panelist, The Role of Education Blogs at the Grassroots

Kenneth Bernstein is most visible at DailyKos, but also writes for The Education Policy Blog, Raising Kaine (an important Virginia blogsite), and other sites as well.  He serves as a resource on educational issues for a number of Democrats in or seeking office, and has run panels on education at both of the YearlyKos conventions. Bernstein is also in his second decade of teaching, now as a National Board Certified high school government teacher in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.  He has degrees in Music from Haverford College, Religion from St. Charles Seminary, and Secondary Social Studies Teaching from Johns Hopkins.

Educator, blogs at Teaching in the 408
Panelist, Blogging from the Trenches.

Kilian Betlach is an alumnus of Boston College and Teach for America. He taught seventh grade Structured English Immersion for six years in east San Jose and served as the Institute Director for both the Oakland Teaching Fellows and Oakland City Teacher Corps. He writes the blog "Teaching in the 408" under the num de guerre TMAO, and has published a novel, This Feels Like A Riot Looks.

Blogs at Huffington Post, wrote a teacher memoir
Panelist: Blogging from the Trenches

Dan Brown’s debut book, The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle, was published in August 2007. He blogs regularly on education for the Huffington Post, and his essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Daily News, Education Week, and the New York Post. He has appeared on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show alongside Jonathan Kozol and Assistant Secretary of Education Doug Mesecar to discuss issues facing new teachers.

Since 2003, Brown has taught in both public and independent schools in New York City. He has taught elementary, middle, and high school students. He holds a bachelor’s degree from New York University, and a master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University.

The Quick and the ED
Panelist: The Role of Education Blogs at the Grassroots

Carey holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Binghamton University and a Master of Public Administration from Ohio State University. In 1995, Carey worked as an education finance analyst for the state of Indiana where he developed a new formula for setting local property taxes and distributing state education aid. He subsequently served as a senior analyst for the Indiana Senate Finance Committee, writing legislation and advising the Democratic caucus on fiscal policy.

From 1999 to 2001, he served as Indiana's Assistant State Budget Director for Education, where he advised the governor on finance and policy issues in K–12 and higher education. Carey came to Education Sector in September 2005 and now serves as Education Sector's research and policy manager

Blogger, Washington Post's The Fix
Panelist, Blogging the Election: Breaking Through the Noise

Co-chair, National Center on Time & Learning, and Author of Time to Learn
Featured Speaker

Chris Gabrieli is an entrepreneur across the fields of business, nonprofits and public policy. Following the success of GMIS, the healthcare software company he co-founded, Chris joined Bessemer Venture Partners. Throughout his 15 years as a partner with Bessemer, Chris has worked to help other entrepreneurs start and grow their companies. Chris's firm has invested over $1 billion in start-up high-tech and biotechnology companies, helping to create more than 100,000 new jobs. Chris remains active as a Senior Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, focused on biotechnology.

In 2000, he co-founded Massachusetts 2020, an educational nonprofit focused on expanding the economic and educational opportunities for children and families across Massachusetts. He was the Founder and Chairman of Boston's After-School for All Partnership, a $26 million collaboration of the City of Boston and twelve foundations, universities and corporations, aimed at expanding and improving after-school opportunities for children.

Former House Speaker, General Chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future
Keynote Speaker

Newt Gingrich is well-known as the architect of the "Contract with America" that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House for the first time in forty years. As an author, Newt has published sixteen books including 10 fiction and non-fiction New York Times best-sellers. Gingrich is Chairman of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm that specializes in transformational change, with offices in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. 

He serves as General Chairman of American Solutions for Winning the Future is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. and is an Honorary Chairman of the NanoBusiness Alliance. Newt is also a news and political analyst for the Fox News Channel. Newt was first elected to Congress in 1978 where he served the Sixth District of Georgia for twenty years. 

In 1995, he was elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives where he served until 1999.  The Washington Times has called him "the indispensable leader" and Time magazine, in naming him Man of the Year for 1995, said, "Leaders make things possible.  Exceptional leaders make them inevitable.  Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional."

Director, Two Million Minutes

Chad Heeter has been a filmmaker for 10 years. He directed, edited and produced Two Million Minutes. He was approached to direct Two Million Minutes as he was completing Master's degrees in Journalism and Latin American Studies at U.C. Berkeley. Heeter has been interested in education since spending two years teaching high school science in Macon, Georgia as member of Teach for America. After TFA, Heeter also spent two years teaching English in a village in rural Japan. Focusing on international reporting, he has shot documentaries throughout Asia and South America.

Education blogger and author of Our School
Panelist: The Role of Education Blogs at the Grassroots

Joanne Jacobs was a San Jose Mercury News editorial writer and Knight-Ridder op-ed columnist for 22 years writing about education, welfare reform and other issues.  She left the newspaper to write Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).  In 2001, she created one of the first education weblogs, at joannejacobs.com, becoming known as the "education blogmother." She's freelanced for newspapers, magazines, Web sites and for the Fordham Foundation, the Lexington Institute and the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington.

Executive Director, Strong American Schools
Moderator, Blogging the Election: Breaking through the Noise

Marc Lampkin is the Executive Director of Strong American Schools’ ED in ’08 campaign. Marc joined Quinn Gillespie & Associates in February 2001 after spending two years serving in a variety of roles with the Bush for President campaign, including Deputy Campaign Manager. He later organized and ran Americans for Better Education (ABE), a coalition of educators, reform advocates, and corporations that support President Bush's education reform plan.

Lampkin has held several senior positions in the United States Congress, including Policy Director for the late U.S. Senator Paul D. Coverdell (R-Ga.) and General Counsel for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). He began his Congressional service as a professional staff member with the Republican staff of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Senior Political Writer and Blogger, Politico
Panelist,  Blogging the Election: Breaking Through the Noise

Reporter, EDWeek and Blogger at Campaign K-12
Panelist: Blogging the Election: Breaking Through the Noise

Michele McNeil covered education and state government in Indiana for a decade before joining Education Week in June 2006. She now focuses on state policy, as well as the states of Florida, Indiana, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, school choice, and school finance—and how elections affect K-12 education.

New America Foundation; blogs at Early Ed Watch
Panelist: Shaping Education Reform: The Issues Ahead

Sara Mead directs the New America Foundation's Early Education Initiative. She also edits the blog Early Education Watch. Her work on issues related to the No Child Left Behind Act, charter schools and public school choice, education funding, and gender equity in education has been featured in The Washington Post and USA Today, and on CBS and ABC News. Before joining New America, Ms. Mead was a senior policy analyst with Education Sector. The daughter, granddaughter, and sister of public school educators, she holds a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Vanderbilt University.

Director of Educational Issues, American Federation of Teachers
Panelist, Shaping Education Reform

John Mitchell is the Director of the American Federation of Teachers’ Educational Issues Department. Prior to being appointed to this position in July 2006 he served as Deputy Director of the Educational Issues Department for 10 years.  Before moving to Washington, DC to work for the AFT John served for ten years as president of the AFT’s state affiliate in New Mexico, the New Mexico Federation of Teachers. 

Prior to that, he taught math and science in the Albuquerque Public Schools for ten years (1975-85).  He holds a BA in Physics from the University of Colorado and a MA in Secondary Education from the University of New Mexico.

Guest teacher blogger on NY Times
Panelist: Blogging from the Trenches

Will Okun has taught English and photography for nine years at Westside Alternative High School in Chicago. He writes about education and teaching as a guest blogger for nytimes.com.  He also operates a photography website (www.wjzo.com) that features portraits of his students and their families and averages 30,000 views a week.

National Review Online
Panelist: Blogging the Election: Breaking Through the Noise

Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor for National Review and a columnist for Time. Ponnuru grew up in Kansas City and graduated summa cum laude from Princeton's history department.

Ponnuru has published articles in numerous newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Newsday, and the New York Post. He has also written for First Things, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, Reason, and other publications. He is the author of the monograph The Mystery of Japanese Growth (American Enterprise Institute/Centre for Policy Studies). He has been a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London and a media fellow at Stanford University's Hoover.

He has appeared on CNN's Inside Politics, NBC's The McLaughlin Group, MSNBC's Buchanan & Press and Donahue, CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer, PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CSPAN's Washington Journal, Comedy Central's Politically Incorrect, Fox News, and NPR's Morning Edition.

Blogger at This Week in Education and District299.com
Moderator, Shaping Education Reform: The Issues Ahead

Alexander Russo's work has appeared in Slate, The Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, Britannica Blog, The National Review Online, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Indianapolis Monthly, and numerous policy and trade publications.  Russo is probably best know for his education policy blog, This Week In Education, and his Chicago schools blog, District 299. 

Before he began writing, Russo was an education adviser to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Chancellor Ramon Cortines (former head of the New York City schools, currently Deputy Superintendent in Los Angeles). Russo was recently awarded a Spencer fellowship at Columbia University's school of journalism.

President, National Education Writers Association; Blogs at  http://edelection.blogspot.com/
Panelist, Shaping Education Reform: The Issues Ahead

Richard Whitmire graduated from the College of Wooster in Ohio and then taught high school English for one year in Canandaigua, N.Y., before taking a newspaper job in Geneva, N.Y. In 1991, Whitmire switched to reporting on education and in 2000 he joined the editorial board of USA Today, where he writes editorials about education issues. In 2004 he concluded a Journalism Fellowship in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland where he looked at why boys are falling behind in school. Whitmire currently serves as president of the National Education Writers Association. 

Education Trust
Panelist: Shaping Education Reform: The Issues Ahead

Amy Wilkins is an experienced political and community organizer with a special skill in media communications.  Amy oversees the Trust’s media, data, government affairs and coalition work.  She has sharpened her skills in advocacy over years of successful work for the Children’s Defense Fund, the Democratic National Committee, the Peace Corps, and the White House Office of Media Affairs, among others.