Sam Chaltain is a DC-based writer and education activist. He works with schools, school districts, and public and private sector companies to help them create healthy, high-functioning learning environments.

Previously, Sam was the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning communities.

Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. He came to the Center from the public school system of New York City, where he taught high school English and History. Sam also spent four years teaching the same subjects at a private school in Brooklyn.

Sam’s first teaching experience was in Beijing, China, where he joined the faculty of the Foreign Languages department at Beijing Normal University as a visiting lecturer. He taught two American History & Literature courses to third-year undergraduates.

Sam’s writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Education Week and USA Today. A periodic contributor to CNN and Huffington Post, Sam is also the author or co-author of five books: The First Amendment in Schools (ASCD, 2003); First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights (Oxford University Press, 2006); American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free: Stories Of Free Expression in America (Oxford, 2011); and Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education (Jossey-Bass, 2011).

Sam has a Master’s degree in American Studies from the College of William & Mary, and an M.B.A. from George Washington University, where he specialized in non-profit management and organizational theory. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he graduated with a double major in Afro-American Studies and History.

As president of Break the Curve Consulting, Craig Jerald partners with national organizations that seek to improve public education in the United States. His clients have included the Center for American Progress, the National Governors Association, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National School Boards Association, and many others. Jerald’s research has been cited in thousands of newspaper, magazine, television, and radio stories, and he has appeared on CNN, Fox News, ABC News, CSPAN, National Public Radio, and many local television and radio broadcasts.

From July 2000 to July 2004, Craig was a principal partner at the Education Trust, where he worked extensively on issues related to school and district accountability, teacher effectiveness, federal education policy, and the practices of high-performing schools and districts. As a senior editor at Education Week from 1996 to 2000, Jerald founded and managed the organization’s research division and directed Ed Week’s annual projects, including Quality Counts, the first national report to grade all 50 states on their education reform efforts. He also worked at the U.S. Department of Education and as a classroom teacher. He began his career as a Teach for America recruit and middle school teacher of English/language arts, history, and mathematics at Bancroft Middle School in California’s Long Beach Unified School District.

The Albert Shanker Institute is a nonprofit organization established in 1998 to honor the life and legacy of the late president of the American Federation of Teachers.

The organization’s by-laws commit it to four fundamental principles —vibrant democracy, quality public education, a voice for working people in decisions affecting their jobs and their lives, and free and open debate about all of these issues.—that is the vision, the mission, and the method of the Albert Shanker Institute.

The institute brings together influential leaders and thinkers from business, labor, government, and education from across the political spectrum. It sponsors research, promotes discussions, and seeks new and workable approaches to the issues that will shape the future of democracy, education, and unionism. Many of these conversations are off-the-record, encouraging lively, honest debate and new understandings.

These efforts are directed by and accountable to a diverse and distinguished board of directors representing the richness of Al Shanker’s commitments and concerns. The organization maintains a small permanent staff, a modest program budget, little overhead, and as much agility as possible.

Committed to basic principles, open to new ideas, and addressing the inter-related issues of work, education, and democracy.

Dana is a Brooklyn-based journalist, a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at The Nation Institute.

She writes most often about education, women's issues, public health, and American politics. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Slate, The Daily Beast, TIME, The American Prospect, The New Republic, the Washington Post, BusinessWeek, the Washington City Paper, In These Times, and other publications.

In 2010 she was the recipient of a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship, and spent one academic year in residence at Columbia University, working on long-form journalism and familiarizing myself with the latest education research. Previously, she was an associate editor at The Daily Beast and The American Prospect.