Kevin K. Kumashiro, PhD, the founding director of CAOE, is professor and chair of Educational Policy Studies and interim co-director of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was formerly the coordinator of Asian American Studies. His research, teaching, and activism are redefining the field of "anti-oppressive education" as he develops new approaches to addressing issues of social justice in schools.

Richard Murnane, an economist, is Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In recent years he has pursued two lines of research. With MIT Professors Frank Levy and David Autor, he has examined how computer-based technological change has affected skill demands in the U.S. economy. Murnane and Levy have written two books on this topic. The second line of research examines the consequences of particular initiatives designed to improve the performance of the education sector. For example, along with HGSE colleagues, Murnane has examined the consequences of providing salary bonuses to attract skilled teachers to high-need schools and the impact that high-stakes tests for students has on the probability of high school graduation. Murnane is a graduate of Williams College and earned a PhD in economics from Yale University in 1974.

Kathleen McCartney is the Dean of the Faculty of Education and the Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Early Childhood Development. She is a developmental psychologist whose research informs theoretical questions on early experience as well as policy questions on child care, early childhood education, and poverty. Since 1989, McCartney has served as a principal investigator on the National Institute of Child Heath and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care & Youth Development, the findings from which were published by Guilford in 2005 book, *Child Care and Child Development*. McCartney is a co-editor of *The Handbook of Early Child Development*, published by Blackwell in 2006 as well as *Best Practices in Quantitative Methods for Developmentalists*, published by the Society for Research in Child Development in 2006. McCartney's work has been informed by her experience as the director of the University of New Hampshire Child Study & Development Center, a laboratory school for children from birth through kindergarten. Kathleen McCartney has been named a Fellow by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Educational Research Association.