JANE A. G. KISE
Jane A. G. Kise, Ed.D, is an educational consultant, specializing in teambuilding, coaching, and school staff development. She is also the coauthor of nearly 20 books, including Introduction to Type and Coaching, Using the MBTI Tool in Organizations, LifeKeys, and Work It Out. She holds an MBA in finance from the Carlson School of Management and a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of St. Thomas. Kise has worked with diverse organizations, including Minneapolis Public Schools and various public and private schools, The Bush Foundation, and numerous other institutions. She is a frequent workshop speaker and has presented at NSDC, World Futures, and APT International conferences. She has taught writing at the university level. She is a faculty member of the Center for Applications of Psychological Type and an executive board member of the Association for Psychological Type.

M. JAMES KNIGHT
M. James Knight, Ph.D is a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. He has spent more than a decade studying instructional coaching, writing two books on the topic: Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction, published by Corwin Press & NSDC, and Coaching Classroom Management, written with Randy Sprick, Wendy Reinke, and Tricia McKale and published by Pacific Northwest Press. Jim's articles on instructional coaching have been included in publications such as The Journal of Staff Development, Principal Leadership, The School Administrator, and Teachers Teaching Teachers. Jim directs several research projects, including Pathways to Success, a comprehensive, district-wide school reform project in the Topeka, Kansas, school district. Jim also leads the coaching institutes and annual instructional coaching conference offered by the University of Kansas. Jim is frequently asked to guide professional learning for instructional coaches and has presented and consulted in more than 40 states, most Canadian provinces, and in Japan. He has also won several university teaching, innovation, and service awards.

TIMOTHY LUCAS
Timothy Lucas has been a teacher and administrator in public education for the past twenty-seven years. He has taught at the elementary, middle school, high school, and college level. He has worked at the district level in curriculum and instruction, gifted and talented education, and has been chairperson of a child study team and a principal. He has also been on the development committee for the New Jersey State standards for science instruction. From 1997 through 2000, he was the superintendent of the Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, school district. Throughout the past decade, as a practitioner on a variety of levels, Tim has focused his attention on integrating the concepts of the five disciplines into curriculum, staff development, and school leadership. He has been a recognized innovator for developing systems thinking tools in classroom and school administration work. Lucas is also one of the co-authors, with Peter Senge and others, of Schools that Learn: A Fifth Discipline Resource, published in September 2000, and was awarded the National Staff Development Council's Book of the Year Award in 2001.

JAY MCTIGHE
Jay McTighe served as Director of the Maryland Assessment Consortium, a state collaboration of school districts working together to develop and share formative performance assessments. Prior to this position, Jay was involved with school improvement projects at The Maryland State Department of Education. Jay is well known for his work with "thinking skills," having coordinated statewide efforts to develop instructional strategies, curriculum models, and assessment procedures for improving the quality of student thinking. He also directed the development of the Instructional Framework, a multi-media database on teaching.

Jay has published articles in a number of leading journals and books, including Educational Leadership (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development [ASCD]), Developing Minds (ASCD), Thinking Skills: Concepts and Techniques (National Education Association), and The Developer (National Staff Development Council). He co-authored three books on assessment - Assessing Learning in the Classroom (NEA), Assessing Outcomes: Performance Assessment Using the Dimensions of Learning Model (ASCD), and Evaluation Tools to Improve as Well as Evaluate Student Performance (Corwin Press). He is co-author, with Grant Wiggins, of the best-selling Understanding by Design series, Understanding by Design (1998), The Understanding by Design Handbook (1999), The Understanding by Design Study Guide (2000), and the newly-released, The Understanding by Design Professional Development Workbook (2004).

GRANT WIGGINS
Grant Wiggins, Ed.D is the President of Authentic Education in Hopewell, New Jersey. He earned his Ed.D. from Harvard University and his B. A. from St. John's College in Annapolis. Grant consults with schools, districts and state education departments on a variety of reform matters; organizes conferences and workshops; and develops print materials and Web resources on curricular change. He is perhaps best known for being the co-author, with Jay McTighe, of Understanding By Design and The Understanding By Design Handbook, the award-winning and highly successful materials on curriculum published by ASCD. His work has been supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Over the past twenty years, Grant has worked on some of the most influential reform initiatives in the country, including Vermont's portfolio system and Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools. He has established statewide Consortia devoted to assessment reform for the states of North Carolina and New Jersey. Grant is the author of Educative Assessment and Assessing Student Performance, both published by Jossey-Bass. His many articles have appeared in such journals as Educational Leadership and Phi Delta Kappan.