Barnett Berry

Barnett Berry is president and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, Inc., based in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Founded in 1999, CTQ seeks to improve student learning and advance the teaching profession by cultivating teacher leadership, conducting timely research, and crafting smart policy.

A former high school teacher, Barnett created, with John Norton, the Teacher Leaders Network—a dynamic virtual community designed to elevate the voices of expert teachers on matters of education policy that impact their profession and the students they serve.

Barnett also has worked as a social scientist at the RAND Corporation, served as a senior executive with the South Carolina State Department of Education, and directed an education policy center while he was a professor at the University of South Carolina. In the 1990s, he helped launch the work of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future—and its state partnership efforts.

Barnett has authored numerous academic reports and publications and many articles for the popular education press. He frequently serves in an advisory capacity to organizations committed to teaching quality, equity, and social justice in America’s schools. For example, in 2010 he was advising the National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation, Education Testing Service and its Teacher Leadership Initiative, Urban Teacher Residencies United, the NEA Foundation’s Institute for Local Innovation in Teaching and Learning, and the Bush Foundation and its teacher-education reform initiative.

At the time of publication, Meredith, Barnett’s wife of 34 years, serves as a special education teacher in the Chapel Hill–Carrboro City Schools. Meredith and Barnett are the proud parents of Joseph, a political organizer for the Working Families Party (New York City), and Evan, an organic farmer in the Pacific Northwest.