Known for his work with the Coalition of Essential Schools and the Atlas Project, Sizer is a modest but brilliant administrator who is knowledgeable about education and thoughtful about what works in schools under varying circumstances. The coalition counteracts high schools'"intellectual shabbiness" and curricular superficiality by…

Known as "Doc" by his students, as a troublemaker by his critics, as good copy for journalists, and as a dedicated professional by his supporters, Dennis Littky is guided by an impassioned desire to improve education, regardless of the personal risks involved. He became a maverick principal to influence educational change. (MLH)

Dennie Palmer Wolf's career has taken her from teaching in a two-room schoolhouse to groundbreaking research on portfolios and alternative assessments. Today she directs PACE (Performance Collaboratives for Education) and is a senior research associate at Harvard Graduate School of Education. In an unequal society, schools are obligated to help…

Describes the career and professional accomplishments of Siegfried Ramler, from his job as translator at the Nuremberg trials to his current role as administrator at Punahou School in Hawaii. The most powerful expression of Ramler's internationalism is the 20-year-old Pan Pacific Program, now firmly rooted in Hawaiian educational life. (MLH)

Since 1987, Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke has made education his top priority. He strongly supports serious, autonomous schools, insists on accountability, and has impeccable education credentials. Recognizing a crisis in public education, Schmoke moved to save the system from further deterioration and opened it to responsible reform via…

Award-winning science author and Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould shares some views on education and contemporary American culture. Gould's most enthusiastic school memory is singing in an all-city chorus. Harvard students are bright and motivated but have no shared culture, historical perspective, or foreign language proficiency. Gould favors…

After conducting 10 interviews with outstanding educators for the "Educational Leadership" portrait series, the author realized his subjects had more in common than extraordinary achievement. They shared patterns constituting a leitmotif in their careers--characteristics such as vision, tenacity, recursiveness, time commitment, and…

Seymour Papert's brainchild LOGO is present in at least one-third of American classrooms and has expanded internationally to enhance learning in small Latin American towns and rural Soviet schools. His latest project involves teaching 18 Boston public school teachers to program and helping students learn in a computer-rich environment. (MLH)

Profiles Andre Allison and Florence Mondry, English teachers at Shoreham-Wading River High School (New York), who have placed composition at the center of their curricula, giving students more responsibility and fostering cooperative learning. Both use reading logs to help students interpret literature intelligently and extract meaning from their…

Deborah Meier has founded three elementary schools, begun a secondary school, and influenced numerous other schools to create environments enabling kids to become powerful by learning to use their minds well. Her students have honed a set of skills allowing them to negotiate the system and seek out helpful adults. (MLH)

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is angry about the way education works in New York City and is determined to debureaucratize schools and make them safer. Memories of his own parochial school education inspire Giuliani to hold up the Catholic school system as a possible reform model. He favors school choice and differs with the chancellor over safety and…

Formerly U.S. Commissioner of Education and Chancellor of State University of New York, Ernest Boyer is a renowned humanist. An avid Civil Rights advocate during the 1970s, Boyer believes knowledge should be channeled toward humane ends. As president of Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching, Boyer broadened the foundation agenda to…

James P. Comer, a distinguished Black child psychiatrist born of sharecropper parents, credits his family's values and continued support for his success in college. In 1968, Comer and his colleagues developed a school-based management team to help poor families and schools develop trust and mutual respect. The program is widely used in New Haven…

Disheartened by working at Children's Hospital and Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, UCLA-trained Hunter became a school psychologist to concentrate on prevention, rather than remediation. Ultimately, she became a consultant aiming to move teaching from a craft to a profession based on research translated into artistic practice. (MLH)

From his early work to establish teacher's union to involvement with civil rights issues, Al Shanker has earned reputation as education profession's moral conscience. Under Shanker's leadership, United Federation of Teachers has grown from 2,500 to 110,000 members. American Federation of Teachers has doubled membership to 796,000. Shanker…