Gary W. Ritter is an Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Arkansas, where he is the Associate Director of the inter-disciplinary Public Policy Ph.D. program. He earned a Ph.D. in Education Policy in 2000 from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania under the advisement of Rebecca A. Maynard. Gary currently teaches courses in Education Policy, Program Evaluation, and Research Methods to graduate students. His research interests include volunteer tutoring programs, program evaluation, standards-based and accountability-based school reform, racial segregation in schools, the impact of pre-school care on school readiness, and school finance. His work has been published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the Journal of Education Finance, the Georgetown Public Policy Review, Black Issues in Higher Education, and Education Week. He is currently working on a review of the impacts of volunteer tutoring programs for the Campbell Collaboration.

Susan Goerlich Zief is a Ph.D. candidate in Education Policy at the Graduate School of Education of the University of Pennsylvania. A former middle school science teacher, she currently works on the evaluation of an after-school program in a low-income suburb of Philadelphia, and on a Campbell Collaboration review of the impacts of after school programs. During her doctoral studies, she has worked for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) where she was a part of the evaluation team for a local systemic change initiative sponsored by the National Science Foundation. She was also part of the planning team for an evidence-based approach reform initiative to improve teaching and learning in urban districts, and serves as a founding editor of Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education. Her research interests include the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in the evaluation of social policies.

Sherri Lauver received her doctorate in Education Policy at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, in 2002. Her dissertation work involved an experimental and process evaluation of an after-school program in a Philadelphia middle school, which was funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation. She currently works as a consultant with the Campbell Collaboration and the Harvard Family Research Project's Out-of-School Time initiative. She begins a position as a Research Associate with the Center for Educational Evaluation and Technical Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, at the U.S. Department of Education in June 2003.