Printer-friendly versionThe Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching elected Andrés Antonio Alonso and Claude Mason Steele to its Board of Trustees for four-year terms during the Foundation’s annual Board meeting in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 17.
Andrés Antonio Alonso
Alonso became CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) in 2007. During his tenure, Baltimore City students have reached their highest outcomes in state exams, across all categories of students. City schools also experienced an enrollment climb, following four decades of steady enrollment decline. It posted its best-ever dropout and graduation rates, driven largely by attention to all students, a focus on adult performance, the promotion of choice and school autonomy for all schools, and intensive efforts to engage parents and community.
He serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as “The Nation’s Report Card.”
He emigrated from Cuba to the United States with his parents at the age of 12. Originally speaking no English, he attended public schools in Union City, New Jersey, graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University, and earned a J.D. and a doctorate in education from Harvard University. After practicing law in New York City he changed course to become an educator.
From 1987 to 1998, Alonso taught emotionally disturbed special education adolescents and English language learners in Newark, New Jersey. He then served as chief of staff for teaching and learning and as deputy chancellor for teaching and learning at the New York City Department of Education during the launch of its Children First reform.
Claude Mason Steele
Steele is the I. James Quillen Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University. He is recognized as a leader in the field of social psychology and for his commitment to the systematic application of social science to problems of major societal significance.
Previously, he served as the 21st provost of Columbia University, as well as a professor of psychology. He was educated at Hiram College and at Ohio State University, where he received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1971. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Yale University, Princeton University, and from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Before joining Columbia University, he was a faculty member at Stanford, holding appointments as the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, as director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and as director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
His research focuses on the psychological experience of the individual and, particularly, on the experience of threats to the self and the consequences of those threats. His early work considered the self-image threat, self-affirmation and its role in self-regulation, the academic under-achievement of minority students, and the role of alcohol and drug use in self-regulation processes and social behavior. While at Stanford University, he further developed the theory of stereotype threat, designating a common process through which people from different groups, being threatened by different stereotypes, can have quite different experiences in the same situation. The theory has also been used to understand group differences in performance ranging from the intellectual to the athletic.
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is working toward a more productive approach to educational research and development, joining researchers, practitioners and expert others on common goals to solve problems in networked communities. Today, our initiatives are focused on creating pathways for student success in community colleges and improving teaching practice. Carnegie’s newly developed research approach workrelates to the idea of the scholarship of teaching and learning, introduced by the Foundation in 1990, where faculty learn from each other, improve on what they find works, continuously create new knowledge, and take what is learned to make it usable by others.Our core belief is that much more can be accomplished together than even the best of us can accomplish alone.
