Board of Directors
Diane Ravitch
President
Co-founder of the Network for Public Education. Ravitch is a historian of education and a retired Research Professor of Education at New York University. She has written 10 books and edited another 14. She is a graduate of the Houston public schools, Wellesley College (BA), Columbia University (Ph.D. in history of American education), and holds 10 honorary doctorates.
Raynard Sanders
Director
Ray Sanders has extensive experience in teaching, educational leadership, and community development. As a principal he developed the first high school DNA lab in the state of Louisiana and created The Creole Cottage Project, an innovative school-to work program where his students built and renovated houses for the community. Most recently his work has been around educational equity and the privatization of public education. Sanders has conducted numerous seminars and workshops across the country and written articles on the market-based education reforms sweeping the country. He authored two books, Twenty -First Century Jim Crow Schools: the Impact of Charters on Public and Education and The Coup D'état of the New Orleans Public School District: Money Power and the Illegal Takeover of a Public School System.
Leonie Haimson
Director
Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a non-profit advocacy group working for smaller class sizes in NYC and the nation as a whole. Haimson is a graduate of Harvard University, worked at the Educational Priorities Panel, and founded Class Size Matters in 2000. Haimson regularly speaks before parent, advocacy, and government groups, writes opinion pieces and blogs, and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News and on national radio shows.
Cassandra B. Ulbrich
Secretary
Former Michigan State Board of Education president from 2014 – 2023. Ulbrich has spent the majority of her career in higher education administration, currently serving as the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Ulbrich began her career as a press secretary to the former U.S. House Democratic Whip David Bonior, acting as the official spokesperson for the Congressman. She has been recognized as one of Michigan’s 40 under 40 by Crain’s Detroit Business.
Yohuru Williams
Director
Professor of history and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas. Dr. Williams received his Ph.D. from Howard University in 1998. He is the author of several books including Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven(Blackwell, 2006) and Teaching beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies (Corwin Press, 2008). Dr. Williams served as an advisor on the popular civil rights reader, Putting the Movement Back into teaching Civil Rights. Dr. Williams has appeared on a variety of local and national radio and television programs. He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post and is a regular contributor to the LA Progressive.
Anthony Cody
Treasurer
Co-founder of the Network for Public Education. Cody worked for 24 years in the Oakland schools. A National Board certified teacher, he now leads workshops with teachers on Project Based Learning. He has a nationally recognized education blog, Living in Dialogue, and he is the author of The Educator and The Oligarch: A Teacher Challenges The Gates Foundation.
Gloria Evans Nolan
Director
Grounded in her experience as a St. Louis Public School graduate and parent, Nolan is now serving as Interim Parent Liaison in the St. Louis Public School district. Nolan has more than 17 years of experience working in non-profits and fostering excellence in the lives of young people through mentoring, managing school partnerships, and developing volunteers and caregivers. She holds a Masters Degree in college student personnel administration and a BS in therapeutic recreation. Nolan is a fierce advocate, championing equity and transformational policy change in public education.
James Harvey
Director
Retired executive director of the National Superintendents Roundtable, which is dedicated to progressive leadership in support of just and humane schools. A native of Ireland, Harvey is the author or co-author of dozens of articles and five books on education and education policy. Harvey served in the Carter administration as an education lobbyist and on the staff of the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Georgina Pérez
Director
Former Texas State Board of Education Representative, District 1, Pérez served as both Board Secretary and as a member of the Committee of Instruction. Pérez is an El Paso native and proud graduate of Eastwood High School in the Ysleta Independent School District. She served as an eighth-grade English Language Arts and Reading teacher, department chair, pre-service and new-service teacher mentor, and professional development educator in the same district for more than a decade.
Julian Vasquez Heilig
Director
Award-winning researcher and teacher. He is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs for Western Michigan University. Heilig’s current research includes quantitatively and qualitatively examining how high-stakes testing and accountability-based reforms and market reforms impact urban minority students. His research interests also include issues of access, diversity, and equity in higher education. Heilig blogs at Cloaking Inequity, consistently rated one of the top 50 education websites in the world by Teach100.
STAFF
Carol Corbett Burris
Executive Director
Burris served as principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District in NY from 2000-2015. Carol received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, and her dissertation on equitable practices in mathematics instruction received the 2003 National Association of Secondary Schools’ Principals Middle Level Dissertation of the Year Award.
In 2010, she was recognized by The School Administrators Association of New York State as the Outstanding Educator of the Year, and in 2013 she was recognized by the National Association of Secondary School Principals as the New York State High School Principal of the Year. Carol serves as a Fellow of the National Education Policy Center. She authored three books on educational equity. Articles that she has authored or co-authored have appeared in Educational Leadership, The Kappan, the American Educational Research Journal, Theory into Practice, The School Administrator and EdWeek.
Contact Carol at
cb*****@ne***********************.org
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Marla Kilfoyle
Grassroots Liaison
Kilfoyle was a public school teacher for 30 years who taught in rural, urban, and suburban communities. A National Board Certified Teacher, Marla was the first educator to be honored as a Finkelstein Memorial Lecturer at Adelphi University because of her commitment to advocacy for public education. Marla also co-authored an Amicus Brief filed in the Supreme Court for Friedrichs vs. CTA and was honored by the NYS Assembly in 2012 as a Woman of Distinction.
She served as the Executive Director of The Badass Teachers Association (BATs) from 2013-2018 and she was on the Steering Committee for the New York State Allies for Public Education from 2014-2018. Throughout her teaching career in the Oceanside, New York School District she held many elected positions in her union.
Contact Marla at
ma***********@ne***********************.org
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Joanna Oszeyczik
Communications Director
Oszeyczik is a communications professional with journalism, public relations, and graphic design expertise. Before coming to NPE, she worked as an editor for a medical magazine, a brand specialist for a national public utility, and a freelance graphic designer. Oszeyczik has used her graphic design skills for local school board elections and special projects in her daughters’ school district.
She is a proud public school mom who often volunteers at her local public school.
