Mark Barnes is a 20-year classroom teacher and creator of the Results Only Learning Environment (ROLE), a progressive, student-centered classroom that eliminates all traditional teaching methods, including grades. While transforming his classroom into a ROLE, Barnes has also revolutionized K–12 web-based instruction by bringing private student websites into his classroom—an extension of school into cyberspace.

Barnes has developed five online courses on digital strategies for educators, taught through two accredited colleges in Ohio. A popular speaker and presenter, Barnes is also a Discovery Education Network Star Educator, honored for his work in education technology.

Susan M. Brookhart, PhD, is Professor Emerita in the Duquesne University School of Education. Dr. Brookhart’s interests include the role of both formative and summative classroom assessment in student motivation and achievement, the connection between classroom assessment and large-scale assessment, and grading.

She was the 2007–2009 editor of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice and is currently an associate editor of Applied Measurement in Education. She is the author or coauthor of numerous books on classroom assessment, teacher professional development, and evaluation.

She received the 2014 Jason Millman Award from the Consortium for Research on Educational Assessment and Teaching Effectiveness (CREATE) and the 2015 Samuel J. Messick Memorial Lecture Award from Educational Testing Service.

Nancy Frey is a professor of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High in San Diego, California. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. Nancy has authored numerous articles on leadership, reading and literacy, and curriculum design as well as books such as Microlearning in the K–12 Classroom, Student Learning Communities, and Your Students, My Students, Our Students.

Thomas R. Hoerr retired after leading the New City School in St. Louis, Missouri, for 34 years and is now the Emeritus Head of School. He teaches in the educational leadership program at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and holds a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis.

Hoerr has written six other books—Becoming a Multiple Intelligences School, The Art of School Leadership, School Leadership for the Future, Fostering Grit, The Formative Five, Taking Social-Emotional Learning Schoolwide—and more than 160 articles, including "The Principal Connection" column in Educational Leadership.