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Kate Walsh, President
kwalsh@nctq.org
Kate Walsh has served as the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) since 2002. Her commitment to addressing educational inequities and the nation's achievement gap has defined her career, with a long tenure as a senior program officer with The Abell Foundation, as well as the Baltimore City Public Schools and Core Knowledge Foundation. Her work has tackled a broad spectrum of need--from launching a highly successful program for gifted public school students that regularly produces finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, to starting The Baraka School, a unique boarding school located in Kenya established for the purpose of educating troubled and at-risk young boys from Baltimore City.
A constant in Walsh's work is her strong belief in the capacity of a single teacher to alter a child's life for the better and that better policies offer the surest path to greater teacher quality. Her convictions are evident in the numerous studies and papers that she has authored and in practice, including starting the first alternative certification program in Maryland.
Ms. Walsh was recently appointed by Governor Martin O'Malley to the Maryland State School Board.
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Sandi Jacobs, Vice President for Policy
sjacobs@nctq.org
Sandi comes to NCTQ having most recently worked at the U.S. Department of Education as a Senior Education Program Specialist for the Reading First and Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration programs. Prior to that, she taught 4th and 5th grade for nearly a decade at Public School 9 in Brooklyn. Ms. Jacobs was a Presidential Management Intern and a charter corps member of Teach For America. She holds a MA in sociology of education from Columbia University's Teachers College and a BA in history from Columbia College.
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Emily Cohen, Policy Analyst
ecohen@nctq.org
Emily has worked at NCTQ since 2005 managing the organization's work on collective bargaining. Prior to joining NCTQ she taught in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as a Teach For America corps member. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Julie Greenberg, Policy Analyst
jgreenberg@nctq.org
Julie taught secondary math for 13 years in Montgomery County (MD) schools before joining NCTQ. Prior to teaching, she worked as a policy analyst for state government in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and for Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. She holds a BA (geology, Carleton College), a MS (water resources management, University of Wisconsin), and a MAT (secondary math, American University).
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Pat Giles, Office Manager
pgiles@nctq.org
Pat has an extensive telecommunications background as a technical project manager with AT&T for 27 years. Since retiring from AT&T she has moved away from the corporate work environment, and into the satisfying world of non-profit organizations. Prior to coming to NCTQ, she served as Director of Administration at the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (VVAF), in that capacity she traveled in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Pat serves as NCTQ?s Office Manager and State Policy Yearbook coordinator.
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Bess Keller, Issues Director
bkeller@nctq.org
Bess Keller joined NCTQ in 2008. She worked as a journalist for 25 years, most of that time on the education beat. Her dozen years at Education Week newspaper reflect her interest in both public policy and communication as levers of change in education. During half her tenure at the paper, she covered teachers, writing about the profession, teaching methods, teacher professional development and education, and teachers? unions. She was part of a team that took a detailed look at the inequitable distribution of teachers for Education Week?s 2003 Quality Counts report. In 2005 she traveled to Kenya, describing the challenges teachers face there, including their response to the AIDS epidemic. Keller also covered state education policy and school leaders in her time at the paper.
Earlier, she was an editor and a reporter for weekly newspapers in Maryland, mostly writing about a growing suburban school district. She also covered the state legislature.
She holds a M.A. in sociolinguists/anthropology (McGill University) and a B.A. in anthropology (Bryn Mawr College).
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Paul Smith, Field Director
psmith@nctq.org
Prior to joining NCTQ, Paul served as a senior leader at the Center for Social Organization of Schools Talent Development High Schools reform model based out of Johns Hopkins University. With Talent Development, Paul provided leadership in all aspects of research-based school reform, and had the opportunity to work as both an Instructional Facilitator and as the Northeast Regional Manager. Prior to joining Hopkins, Paul taught social studies at the secondary level in the Washington, DC area. He holds a BA in history from Catholic University (DC), an MAT in secondary education from Trinity (DC), and a MLA from Johns Hopkins University.
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And last, but certainly not least, NCTQ would like to acknowledge our great team of researchers,
Aileen Corso, Valerie Franck, Kate Kelliher, Trish Madden, Betsy McCorry, Tracey Myers-Preston, and Kelly Rosen.
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