Press Releases and Statements

Read the press release (152K PDF) from the National Assessment Governing Board on the 2005 Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) science results.

Read the 2005 TUDA science statement from Darvin M. Winick, Chair, National Assessment Governing Board (159K PDF).

Read the 2005 TUDA science statement from Mark Schneider, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

Read the 2005 TUDA science statement from Michael Casserly, Executive Director, Council of the Great City Schools (112K PDF).

Bios of the speakers are available below.

Darvin M. Winick
Mark Schneider
Michael Casserly

Darvin M. Winick

Darvin Winick is Chair of the National Assessment Governing Board. He is also President of Winick & Associates, an organizational research and consulting organization and a Senior Research Fellow in the College of Education at the University of Texas in Austin.

Previously, Winick was an advisor to the 1984 Texas Select Committee on Public Education. He also helped organize the Texas Business and Education Coalition and Texans for Education and was Chairman of the Research Advisory Committee of the Texas Educational Economic Policy Center that set out the framework for the current Texas public school accountability system.

Winick has served as volunteer Chief of Staff for the Texas Governor's Task Force on Education, Vice Chair of the Governor's Focus on Reading Task Force, and a member of the Education Commissioner's Committee on Accountability. He co-authored Four-Star Schools of Texas, a report on public school campus performance, and has edited reports on education accountability, early reading instruction, and teacher preparation.

Winick is a certified management consultant and a founding member of the Institute of Management Consultants. In 1957, he helped organize LWFW, a psychological research and organizational consulting firm and served as its President and Managing Principal. He has served as Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Intermedco, Inc., Director of Vallen Corporation, Director and member of the Executive Committee of Stewart & Stevenson Services, Inc., and Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee of MaximBank, Inc.

Winick holds a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Purdue University.

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Mark Schneider

Mark Schneider was confirmed by the Senate as the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on 24 October 2005 for the remainder of a term expiring June 20, 2009.  NCES is one of the four centers of the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education.  He is on leave from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he is Distinguished Professor of political science. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1974. He has written widely in the areas of urban politics and public policy. His articles have appeared in all the major political science, sociology, and policy journals. His 1989 book The Competitive City won special recognition by the American Political Science Association’s Urban Politics Section for its theoretical contribution to the study of urban politics. His current work focuses on education policy and his most recent book, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools (Princeton U. Press, 2000, with Paul Teske and Melissa Marschall) won the Aaron Wildavsky best book prize from the Policy Studies Organization. His latest book, Charter Schools: Hope or Hype?, written with Jack Buckley, will be published by Princeton University Press in 2007. Schneider has also done extensive research connecting school facilities to educational outcomes.

Schneider has been active in his professional organizations, having served as the Vice President of the American Political Science Association 2000-2001; President, American Political Science Association Public Policy Section, 2000-2001; Program Chair, Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meetings, 2001; and on the executives council of the Midwest Political Science Association, the APSA Urban Section, and the APSA Public Policy Section. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City, September 1997-July 1998 and at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, August 1990-August 1991. Earlier he held a Fulbright Hays Senior Fellowship, 1980-1981, at Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.

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Michael Casserly

Michael Casserly has served as Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools, the nation’s primary coalition of large urban public school systems, since January 1992. Previously, Casserly served as the organization's Director of Legislation and Research.

As head of the Council, Casserly has unified urban schools nationwide around a vision of reform and improvement; launched a research program on trends in urban education; convened the first Education Summit of Big City Mayors and Urban School Superintendents; led the nation's largest urban school districts to volunteer for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); led the first national study of common practices among the nation’s fastest improving urban school districts; and launched national task forces on a range of issues.

He is currently spearheading efforts to boost academic performance in the nation’s big city schools, strengthen management and operations of urban school systems, and challenge inequitable state financing formulas.

While Director of Legislation and Research, Casserly initiated major reforms in Title I, vocational education, and drug-free schools. He also wrote the federal Magnet School Act and the Urban Schools of America Act.

Casserly has written numerous studies and reports on urban schools, including Beating the Odds, the nation’s first look at urban school performance on state tests. He has produced television shows with Dan Rather, Charlene Hunter-Gault, Carole Simpson, Carl Rowan, and Juan Williams, and serves on several national boards and advisory groups.

Casserly is a U.S. Army veteran, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland and a B.A. from Villanova University.

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