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NCTAF Names Cahill, Frelow, Martinez, and Moir as Commissioners
The New Commissioners Have Been Instrumental in Shaping Education Policy that Strengthens Teaching, Expands Opportunity, and Supports Innovation in Schools
WASHINGTON, DC – April 27, 2015 – The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future has named Michele Cahill, a Distinguished Fellow in Education and Youth Development at the National Center for Civic Innovation; Fred Frelow, the Senior Program Officer at the Ford Foundation New York; Monica Martinez, an author, education consultant and strategist, a Deeper Learning Fellow for the Hewlett Foundation, and an appointee to the White House Commission of Educational Excellence for Hispanics; and Ellen Moir, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the New Teacher Center (NTC), as new commissioners.
“Each of these talented individuals brings a breadth of experience and knowledge for affecting change on both a national and local scale,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, NCTAF Commissioner and Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University. “As NCTAF continues to develop research and encourage dialogue around great teaching, we will be incorporating the new Commissioners’ vast understanding of what works for all children into the key policies and practices that NCTAF recommends as an organization.”
Michele Cahill has more than 30 years of experience working in the areas of education reform, youth development, and urban affairs. Most recently, Cahill was Vice President for the National Program at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where she led the philanthropy’s strategy to expand educational opportunity through systemic change across K-12, to increase graduation and degree completion by urban and low-income students, and to support expanded pathways to citizenship, civil participation, and civic integration for immigrants and disconnected youth. She also influenced the collaborative development of the Next Generation Science Standards, and “100Kin10” partnership for STEM teaching. Prior to her work at Carnegie, Cahill served as Senior Counselor for Education Policy under former Chancellor Joel Klein in the New York City Department of Education, where she was responsible for secondary education reform to increase graduation rates including new schools.
At the Ford Foundation, Fred Frelow works on issues of education and scholarship in the United States. His grant-making focuses on improving the quality of teaching in secondary schools serving low-income, minority, and immigrant children. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, Frelow had stints at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has also served as the director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Magnet School Assistance Project at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens, N.Y. Frelow is no stranger to NCTAF: in the 1990s he worked as the director of national affairs and associate director of urban initiatives for the Commission.
Monica Martinez released her book Deeper Learning: How Eight Innovative Public Schools Are Transforming Education in the Twenty-First Century in June 2014. She has great expertise in high school redesign and college readiness. As an education strategist, she has served in an advisory capacity to leaders of multiple organizations, including nonprofits, state systems, and foundations to assist in creating, revising, or implementing their education initiatives. Her career encompasses major programmatic, management, and executive leadership roles and is marked both by her extensive knowledge of secondary reform and college readiness and hands-on experience managing and supporting major foundation initiatives.
Ellen Moir founded the New Teacher Center in 1998 to improve student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers and school leaders and to scale high quality teacher induction services to a national audience. Moir is recognized as a passionate advocate for our nation’s newest teachers and for the students they teach. NTC strengthens school communities through proven mentoring and professional development programs, online learning environments, policy advocacy, and research. Today, NTC has a staff of over 150 who work closely with educators and policymakers across the country. NTC seeks to work in high-poverty schools in underserved communities to ensure that the nation’s low-income, minority, and English language learners, those students most often taught by inexperienced teachers, have the opportunity to receive an excellent education.
“We are delighted to include these new Commissioners into the exciting work that NCTAF is doing to support and strengthen the teaching profession,” added Melinda George, NCTAF’s President. “Their addition to the Commission supports our efforts to rally stakeholders and build a positive, national discourse that ensures great teaching for all students.”
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The National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (NCTAF) was founded in 1994 as a bipartisan effort to engage education policymakers and practitioners to address the entrenched national challenge of recruiting, developing, and retaining great teachers in order to ensure that all students have access to quality teaching in schools organized for success. For 20 years, NCTAF has worked to drive and inform the national dialogue about the importance of great teaching, especially in hard-to-staff schools. NCTAF’s research and recommendations inform innovations and improvements in teaching quality nationwide, focus attention on the importance of equitable distribution and retention of teachers, and promote promising practices for the development of teachers’ skills and career pathways.