Featured Speakers 2008

THANK YOU!

Patrick Burk, Ph.D., currently serves as Chief Policy Officer in the Oregon Department of Education. He joined the state department staff in 2002 as Associate Superintendent for Federal Programs with primary responsibility for coordination and implementation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Mr. Burk began his career as a teacher and college counselor in Louisiana. After completing doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, he worked in program design for the Chicago Public Schools. He went on to serve for 26 years in administration in Portland Public Schools, including serving as a building administrator at the elementary, middle and high school levels, directing the office of Grants Management and Partnership Development and supervision of special programs and student services. He also served as Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum and Instructional Policy.

Dean Kern serves as the Director of the Charter Schools Program (CSP) for the US Department of Education. As director, Mr. Kern is responsible for carrying out the purpose of the CSP, which is to increase the national understanding of the charter school model and expand the number of high quality charter schools. He directs and coordinates a $200 million grant program that provides financial assistance to States for the planning, program design, and initial implementation of charter schools, and the dissemination of information on charter schools. Mr. Kern serves as the Department’s resource on national charter school policy, research and technical assistance.

Mr. Kern came to the Department with twenty-five years in education encompassing a diverse and extensive range of educational options ranging from American sponsored overseas international schools to stateside public schools and charter schools. He is an experienced classroom teacher and administrator, both nationally and internationally. Mr. Kern immersed in Colorado’s charter school movement as a principal and later as a Senior Consultant for the Unified Grants and Charter Schools Unit within the Colorado Department of Education.

During his tenure as a charter school principal in Colorado, Mr. Kern also worked as a national consultant for the Core Knowledge Foundation, Charlottesville, VA providing professional development and training for public and private schools implementing the CK scope and sequence. In addition, Mr. Kern also served in an advisory role and as an external site visit chair with the Colorado League of Charter Schools Accountability and Accreditation Committee. He received a dual bachelor’s in elementary education and special education and a master’s in education administration from Northern Arizona University with continuing graduate work at Trenton State College and the University of Colorado-Denver.

Robin Lake is an Associate Director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. As an Associate Director at CRPE, Ms. Lake conducts research and develops new proposals for major K-12 public school system governance reforms, including charter schools, public school contracting, and standards-based accountability systems. In addition to co-directing the Center, Ms. Lake also directs the Center's National Charter School Research Project (NCSRP), which is an effort to improve the balance, rigor, and application of charter school research. She specializes in charter school research and policy development that focus on effective accountability policies; scale and supply; and school district use of chartering as a reform strategy. Ms. Lake currently co-directs Inside Charter Schools project, one of the NCSRP’s initiatives. ICS is a three-year project funded by US Department of Education. Ms. Lake focuses on examining three main school components: instructional methods and programmatic offerings, teacher human resource management, and leadership strategies and turnover.

Ms. Lake has authored numerous studies and provided expert technical assistance reports on charter schools. Her publications include Charter Schools and Accountability in Education (Brookings 2002); Holding Charter Authorizers Accountable: Why It Is Important and How It Might Be Done (NCSRP White paper 2006); Identifying and Replicating the “DNA” of Successful Charter Schools: Lessons from the Private Sector (NCSRP Research Brief 2007); and an array of others. In addition, Ms. Lake is a co-editor of the annual NCSRP publication Hopes, Fears, & Reality: A Balanced Look at American Charter Schools. Ms. Lake holds an M.A. in Public Administration from the University of Washington.

Todd Ziebarth is the State Policy Director for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), a national nonprofit organization committed to increasing the number of high-performing charter schools available to all families, particularly low-income and minority families who currently don't have access to quality public schools.

From 1997 to 2003, Mr. Ziebarth was a Policy Analyst at the Education Commission of the States, where he worked with numerous states on public education governance issues, including charter schools. From 2003 to 2005, he was a Policy Analyst at Augenblick, Paliach, and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in educational finance, governance, and school improvement issues.

Mr. Ziebarth has authored many national and state-level research and policy publications related to key charter school issues, like caps, funding, authorizing, and achievement, among others. He is one of the foremost experts regarding charter school policies and practices throughout the nation.