Sign Up for updates from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Featured Video
National
Ohio
Fellows
Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellows are accomplished experts whose efforts assist with widening our range of expertise and impact in the policy and media spheres. Our fellows post regularly on their respective blogs, commenting on Fordham’s priority areas of “doing more with less” (i.e. delivering quality education in an era of tight budgets), rethinking education governance (and the attendant politics of school reform), smart implementation of the Common Core, and school choice and charter schools.
Bernard Lee Schwartz was a businessman and portrait photographer, whose work can be found at www.bernschwartz.org.
We are pleased to have the support of the Bernard Lee Schwartz Foundation for the following policy fellows:
Peter Meyer
Adjunct Fellow
Peter Meyer is an adjunct fellow with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Meyer is also a former News Editor of Life magazine and the author of numerous nonfiction books, including the critically acclaimed The Yale Murder (Empire Books, 1982; Berkley Books, 1983) and Death of Innocence (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985; Berkley Books, 1986). Over the course of his three-decade journalism career Meyer, who holds a masters degree in history from the University of Chicago, has touched down in cities around the globe, from Bennington to Baghdad, and has written hundreds of stories, on subjects as varied as anti-terrorist training for American ambassadors to the history of the 1040 income tax form. His work has appeared in such publications as Harper's, Vanity Fair, National Geographic, New York, Life, Time and People. Since 1991, Meyer has focused his attentions on education reform in the United States, an interest joined while writing a profile of education reformer E.D. Hirsch for Life. Meyer subsequently helped found a charter school, served on his local Board of Education (twice) and, for the last eight years, has been an editor at Education Next. His articles for the journal include “The Early Education of our Next President” (Fall 2008), “New York City’s Education Battles: The mayor, the schools, and the 'rinky-dink candy store’” (Spring 2008), “Learning Separately: The case for single-sex schools” (Winter 2008), and “Can Catholic Schools Be Saved?” (Spring 2007). Meyer also writes and edits, mostly on education, for the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute.
Kathleen Porter-Magee
Senior Director, High Quality Standards Program; Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
Kathleen Porter-Magee is the Senior Director of the High Quality Standards Program at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow, where she leads the Institute’s work on state, national, and international standards evaluation and analysis. Previously, Ms. Porter-Magee served as the senior director of curriculum and professional development for Achievement First, where she led the team's expansion from one to a team of more than 16 achievement directors, content-area leads, and curriculum and professional development associates. She also oversaw the development of AF’s nationally-recognized system of interim assessments and managed professional development for the more than 500 teachers across two states.
Previously, Ms. Porter-Magee served as the director of professional development and recruitment for the 115 Archdiocese of Washington, DC Catholic Schools, as the associate research director of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and as a research fellow at both Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, DC. Ms. Porter-Magee began her career as a classroom teacher and department chair at both the middle and high school levels. She holds a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross in Political Science and French and an M.A. in Education Policy and Leadership from the George Washington University.
