Debbie Beldock has served the students of the San Diego Unified School District for 25 years. She currently serves as the Executive Director of Special Projects, focused on the improvement of student achievement via the venue of various categorical programs. From 2002-2006, she served as the Executive Director of Instruction & Curriculum. Under Beldock's leadership, the district continued to implement its highly successful reform efforts, which focused on improving classroom instruction and accelerating student achievement. In addition to overseeing the district's curriculum development, she also led the collaborative development of leadership curriculum for principals and teacher leaders. Prior to her position as Executive Director, Beldock served as an Instructional Leader (Assistant Superintendent) from 1998-2002, supervising 24 schools at both the elementary and secondary level.
Beldock gained her administrative experience first as a vice pincipal from 1989 - 1993. She then spent five years as a pincipal at two low performing elementary schools. Earlier in her career, Beldock held multiple curriculum development roles and has worked in every curricular area. She began her teaching career in the mid-1970's in Norfolk, VA. Currently, Beldock also serves as an adjunct professor in the Educational Leadership Development Academy at University of San Diego, teaching Instructional Leadership and Supervision and is a consultant for the School Leadership Center for Greater New Orleans, the Arkansas Leadership Academy and the Illinois Principals’ Academy.

Paula A. Cordeiro has been Dean of the School of Leadership and Education Sciences at the University of San Diego since 1998. Previously Dr. Cordeiro was the Coordinator of the masters and doctoral programs in Educational Leadership at The University of Connecticut. Cordeiro is a former teacher, principal and school head in international schools in Venezuela and Spain. She is a past president of the University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA), and in 1998 was awarded a fellowship by the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management (FCCEAM). Dr. Cordeiro has published three books and recently finished the third edition of her co-authored text: An Introduction to Educational Leadership: A Problem-Based Approach. Paula's research is in the areas of school leadership, cross-cultural leadership and international education. Under Dean Cordeiro's leadership, the Educational Leadership Development Academy (ELDA), a partnership with the San Diego Unified School District that prepares and provides professional development for school administrators, was created. She is past President of the San Diego Council on Literacy, a founding member of the Academy of International School Heads, a board member of the International Council for the Education of Teachers (ICET) and a board member of the Francis Parker School. Paula is the board chair for Keiller Leadership Academy a charter middle school in Southeast San Diego.  In February 2006 Dr. Cordeiro was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and she was recently appointed to the board of the Irvine Foundation in San Francisco.

Lisa Delpit, Executive Director for the Center for Urban Education & Innovation, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in 1993 from Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a “visionary scholar and woman of courage.” Her work on school-community relations and cross-cultural communication was cited when she received her MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. Most recently, Delpit has been selected as the Antioch College Horace Mann Humanity Award recipient for 2003, which recognizes a contribution by alumni of Antioch College who have "won some victory for humanity." She describes her strongest focus as "finding ways and means to best educate urban students, particularly African-American, and other students of color." Among her publications are Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (1995); The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children (co-edited with Theresa Perry, 1998); and The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom (co-edited with Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, 2002).

Carol Osborne has been a literacy leader in the San Diego Unified School District as a classroom teacher, Reading Recovery teacher, elementary school administrator and for the past three years, as the Director of Literacy and History-Social Science.  Her recent work has focused on building teachers’ literacy content knowledge in order to support their deep understanding of grade level content standards and the analysis of student work that meets grade level standards.

Carol has been an adjunct professor in the Educational Leadership Development Academy at University of San Diego since 2002.  She teaches “School Leadership and the Politics of Education”, the first course for aspiring leaders enrolled in a two-year program.  As an elementary principal, Carol mentored administrative interns and new principals to support their skills as instructional leaders.

Kati Haycock is one of the nation’s leading child advocates in the field of education.

She currently serves as President of The Education Trust. Established in 1992, the Trust does what no other Washington-based education organization seeks to do—speaks up for what’s right for young people, especially those who are poor or members of minority groups.  The Trust also provides hands-on assistance to educators who want to work together to improve student achievement, pre-kindergarten through college.

Prior to coming to The Education Trust, Haycock served as executive vice president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the nation’s largest child advocacy organization.

A native Californian, Haycock founded and served as president of The Achievement Council, a statewide organization that provides assistance to teachers and principals in predominately minority schools in improving student achievement.  Before that, she served as director of the Outreach and Student Affirmative Action programs for the nine-campus University of California system.

As a young bilingual teacher serving the students of migrant workers, Susana Dutro discovered her lifelong mission. She has dedicated her professional life to increasing the quality of language and literacy instruction for English Language Learners, first in her own classroom and later as an administrator at district and county levels, adjunct education faculty, professional developer and author.
 
The continuing need for specific support in second language literacy and ELD instruction led her to develop A Focused Approach for English Learner Instruction building on existing models of second language instruction to propose a framework for explicit, engaging instruction that includes analysis of academic language tasks designed to equip students with requisite language tools to express the sophistication of their thinking. She is the principal author of several handbooks for teachers based on this framework, most recently Systematic ELD Instruction: A Handbook for K-6 Teachers.
 
Her articles include Rethinking English Language Instruction: An Architectural Approach. She speaks widely, consults nationally with districts and other educational organizations, working side-by-side with teachers and administrators to design effective programs. For several years Susana headed English Language Learner initiatives for the California Reading & Literature Project and the Monterey County Office of Education. She is a founding partner of E.L. Achieve, an organization dedicated to assisting educators in equipping English learners for academic achievement.

Michael Schmoker has worked on school and district improvement, assessment, curriculum and staff development as a central office administrator and now as a senior consultant at McREL (Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory). He is the subject of 2 video series by ASCD and the Video Journal of Education.  In the last five years, Dr. Schmoker has trained and consulted in hundreds of schools and districts throughout the United States and Canada.  Recently, he was a featured speaker at the Harvard Principal's Institute. He has written numerous articles, which have appeared in Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week and Time Magazine. His four books include the ASCD bestseller Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement, no in its second edition, and The Results Fieldwork: Practical Strategies from Dramatically-Improved Schools.

Randolph Ward was appointed the San Diego County Superintendent of Schools in June 2006. While his most recent jobs have been helping rescue troubled urban school districts, Ward, who is bilingual, has also taught in Venezuela and Columbia. He began his education career as a preschool and kindergarten teacher, first in his hometown of Boston, then in nearby Cambridge.
For three years, Dr. Ward has served as the state-appointed administrator for Oakland Unified School District. Under his leadership the district eliminated a 6 million dollar budget shortfall while simultaneously showing greater improvement on the state’s Academic Performance Index than any school system in California.
Prior to his three years in Oakland, Ward served as the state-appointed administrator in the Compton Unified School District for more than six years (1996-2003).  Under Ward’s leadership, the school district repaid its bankruptcy loan to the state.  Test scores in Compton Unified improved five consecutive years during Ward’s tenure there, while the high school dropout rate decreased, college admissions increased and Advance Placement course offerings at the district’s high schools expanded.