Megan Blumenreich, is Professor of Childhood Education at The City College of New York, City University of New York. Megan began her career in education teaching in Compton, CA as 1990 TFA corps member; she later worked as the director of The Learning Center, an educational program for children affected with HIV at The Special Needs Clinic, an interdisciplinary clinic located at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Since 2002, she has taught at City College. She is the editor in chief of The New Educator, a quarterly journal with a focus on preparing and supporting new teachers.

Beverly Falk, Ed.D., is Professor and Director Emerita of the Graduate Programs in Early Childhood Education at The School of Education, The City College of New York. She has served in a variety of educational roles: classroom teacher, child care center director, public school founder and director, district administrator, research, and consultant — at the school, district, state, and national levels. Her scholarship centers on early childhood education, performance assessment, teacher education, and teacher research. Throughout her career, her work has focused on supporting understandings about how children learn so as to ensure that our youngest, most vulnerable citizens — especially those in historically underserved diverse urban communities — have access to high quality learning opportunities.

Dr. Falk is the Director of The High Quality Early Learning Project, an open-access online video and resource collection of high quality early learning practices in urban classrooms serving children and families from diverse racial, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The project shines a light on teachers and classrooms and schools that provide caring and supportive high quality educational environments.

Other roles in which Dr. Falk has served include being a Fellow of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Quest Project (2005-2007); a Public Scholarship Fellow of the Colin Center for Policy Studies at CCNY (2010-2011); the founding editor of The New Educator, a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal that is published by The City College of New York's School of Education in partnership with the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) (2004-2017); a Senior Scholar at the Stanford Center for Equity, Learning, and Assessment (SCALE), an organization that supports innovation in performance-based assessment for teachers and students (2010-2016); and a consulting educator for the Learning Policy Institute (2023 - present).

The founding editor of The New Educator, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal about educator preparation, Dr. Falk is the author of more than 150 publications. Her books include High Quality Early Learning for a Changing World: What Educators Need to Know and Do (published in English and Chinese by Teachers College Press, 2018); Defending Childhood: Keeping the Promise of Early Education (Teachers College Press, 2012); Teaching Matters: Stories from Inside City Schools, co-authored with Megan Blumenreich (The New Press, 2012); Teaching the Way Children Learn (published in Arabic, 2015 and English byTeachers College Press, 2008); The Power of Questions: A Guide to Teacher and Student Research (Heinemann Press, 2005); The Heart of the Matter: Using Standards and Assessments to Learn (Heinemann Press, 2000); and Authentic Assessment in Action, co-authored with Linda Darling-Hammond and Jacqueline Ancess (Teachers College Press, 1995).