Meet Our Speakers

Amanda Kibler is a Professor in the College of Education at Oregon State University. Her scholarship focuses on better understanding the language and literacy development of multilingual children and adolescents from immigrant backgrounds and using these insights to support educators in providing more equitable learning opportunities for all students. This work has been funded by both the Spencer Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation and has been published or is in press at Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, The International Multilingual Research Journal, The Modern Language Journal, TESOL Quarterly, and Teachers College Record, among other journals. Her book documenting an eight-year longitudinal study of bilingual writers across adolescence and early adulthood, Longitudinal Interactional Histories: Bilingual and Biliterate Journeys of Mexican Immigrant-origin Youth, was published in 2019. Dr. Kibler is currently a Co-Editor for Journal of Second Language Writing and has served as the Chair of the AERA Second Language Research Special Interest Group (2015-2017), a member of the TESOL International Association’s Research Committee (2013-2017), and Chair of the American Association for Applied Linguistics’ Dissertation Award Committee (2018-present).

Guillermo Solano-Flores is Professor of Education at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. He specializes in educational assessment and the linguistic and cultural issues that are relevant to both international test comparisons and the testing of cultural and linguistic minorities. His research is based on the use of multidisciplinary approaches that use psychometrics, sociolinguistics, semiotics, and cognitive science in combination. He has conducted research on the development, translation, localization, and review of science and mathematics tests. He has been principal investigator in several National Science Foundation-funded projects that have examined the intersection of psychometrics, semiotics, and linguistics in testing. He is the author of the theory of test translation error, which addresses testing across cultures and languages. Also, he has investigated the use of generalizability theory—a psychometric theory of measurement error—in the testing of English language learners and indigenous populations.

Jennifer O’Day is an Institute Fellow at AIR. Over the past 25 years, Dr. O’Day has carried out research, advised national and state policy makers, and written extensively in the areas of systemic standards-based reform, educational equity, accountability, and capacity-building strategies. One main focus of her work in recent years has been on strategies for intervening in low performing, high poverty schools identified under systems of state, local, and federal accountability. Since joining AIR in 2002, Dr. O’Day has led the state evaluation of California’s Public School Accountability Act (2002-03), the national evaluation of State Implementation of NCLB (2003-08), and the national evaluation of the implementation of Title III of ESEA. This and related work has led to Dr. O’Day’s emphasis on the vital role that school districts play in establishing the conditions for meaningful change in schools and classrooms.

Kenji Hakuta is the Lee J. Jacks Professor of Education emeritus at Stanford University. An experimental psycholinguist by training, he is best known for his work in the areas of bilingualism and the acquisition of English in immigrant students. He is the author of numerous research papers and books, including Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism and In Other Words: The Science and Psychology of Second Language Acquisition. He chaired a National Academy of Sciences report Improving Schooling for Language Minority Children and co-edited a book on affirmative action in higher education, Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education. Hakuta is also active in education policy. He has testified to Congress and other public bodies on a variety of topics, including language policy, the education of language minority students, affirmative action in higher education, and improvement of quality in educational research. He has served as an expert witness in education litigation involving minority students.

Mark Schneider, Director of U.S. Institute of Education Sciences. Before joining IES, Mark Schneider was a vice president and an Institute Fellow at American Institutes for Research (AIR) and President of College Measures. Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Schneider served as Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics from 2005–2008. In 2013, the Chronicle of Higher Education selected him as one of the 10 people who had the most impact on higher education policy that year. He is the author of numerous article and books on education policy. His most recent book, The University Next Door, edited with KC Deane, was published in 2014 by Teachers College, Columbia University.

Secretary Miguel A. Cardona was sworn in as the 12th Secretary of Education on March 2nd, 2021. Secretary Cardona previously served as the Commissioner of Education in Connecticut; a position he held after being appointed by Governor Ned Lamont in August 2019. In this position, he faced the unprecedented challenge of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and led the safe school reopening efforts in Connecticut. To do so, Secretary Cardona and his Department provided school districts with the balance of guidance, local autonomy, and oversight needed to ensure equitable and meaningful educational opportunities for students while also prioritizing public health mitigation measures. Secretary Cardona and the State of Connecticut focused on equity by arranging for student access to technology to support remote learning, helping the state become the first in the nation to provide learning devices to fulfill the identified need for all students. Recognizing the increased importance of providing resources for the social-emotional health of students and staff, Secretary Cardona and his team collaborated with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and other stakeholders to provide free social and emotional learning courses.