Ron Berger is Chief Academic Officer for EL Education. EL Education guides a network of over 150 public schools in more than 30 states – an organization that partners with districts and charter boards to found public schools in low-income communities that send all graduates to college, and transforms existing public schools K – 12 toward high student achievement, character and citizenship. EL Education’s core work is building teacher capacity in schools and districts through professional coaching, resources and open-source curriculum.

Ron works closely with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he did his graduate work and teaches a course that uses exemplary student project work to illuminate standards. With Harvard colleague Steve Seidel, he founded Models of Excellence: The Center for High-Quality Student Work, an open-source collection of the nation’s best K-12 student project work and writing. He is an Annenberg Foundation Teacher Scholar, and received the Autodesk Foundation National Teacher of the Year award. He is the author of six books: An Ethic of Excellence and A Culture of Quality; more recent works include Leaders of Their Own Learning, Transformational Literacy, Management in the Active Classroom, and Learning that Lasts.”

Ron was a public school teacher and master carpenter in rural Massachusetts for over 25 years. His writing and speaking center on inspiring quality and character in students, specifically through project-based learning, original scientific and historical research, service learning, and the infusion of arts. He works with the national character education movement to embed character values into the core of academic work.