Dr. Rebecca Palacios is an educator who taught preschool for more than thirty years in Corpus Christi, Texas. Palacios is also a teacher mentor and the former vice chair of the National Board For Professional Teaching Standards.

Dr. Pedro Noguera is a professor and sociologist at New York University whose work focuses on the impact of demographics, as well as of social and economic conditions, on schools around the country.

Doug Hesse is the director of the Writing Program at the University of Denver and Professor of English. In 2015, he was named as the President of the National Council of Teachers of English. His scholarly interests are creative nonfiction, writing pedagogy, the organization of writing programs, and national literacy efforts, and he has presented keynotes on these topics at national education conferences.

Carol Jago taught English in middle and high school for more than 30 years and is a popular speaker at national education conferences. She is a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and serves as an associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA.

Dr. Washington is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of California – Irvine (UCI). Dr. Washington’s research is focused on the intersection of literacy, language variation, and poverty. 

Dr.  Sharon Ramey is a professor and research scholar at Virginia Tech University. Ramey and her husband, Dr. Craig Ramey, have done extensive work on the health and development of young children. Their numerous studies have shown dramatic gains in learning and accomplishment as the result of nurturing care in early childhood.

Dr. Karl Alexander is a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His research looks at the influences of school and home on student success, why some children are more successful in school than others, and how this affects them later in life. He is a principal investigator with the Beginning School Study, which since 1982 has been monitoring the personal and academic development of youngsters who began first grade that year in 20 Baltimore City Public Schools.

Earl Martin Phalen is the CEO and founder of Summer Advantage USA, a summer learning program that provides elementary and middle school students with research-based learning programs focused on academic gains.