Chairman, Cross & Joftus, LLC
Christopher T. Cross is chairman of Cross & Joftus, LLC, an education-policy consulting firm. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for Education Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Education Commission of the States. In addition Mr. Cross serves as a consultant to the Broad Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation. He is a member of the advisory board for the School Evaluation Service program of Standard and Poor's.
From 1994 to 2002 he served as president and chief executive officer of the Council for Basic Education (CBE). Before joining CBE, Mr. Cross served as Director of the Education Initiative of The Business Roundtable and as Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education.
Mr. Cross chaired the National Assessment of Title I Independent Review Panel on Evaluation for the U.S. Department of Education from 1995-2001 and the National Research Council Panel on Minority Representation in Special Education from 1997-2002. He is a member of the board of directors of the American Institutes for Research and on the board of trustees of Whittier College. He also serves on the board of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, The New Teacher Project and EdSource and in March 2002 facilitated the negotiated rule-making process on Title I for the U.S. Department of Education.
In 2001, he completed a six year term on the Board of International Comparative Studies in Education for the National Research Council, and chaired the National Council for Education and Humanities Development of the George Washington University from its inception in 2000 through 2002. From 1994-1997, Mr. Cross served as president of the Maryland State Board of Education. He was a member of the National Education Commission on Time and Learning.
He has written extensively in the education and public policy areas and has been published in numerous scholarly and technical publications, including Education Week, Kappan, The College Board Review, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
Mr. Cross’ book (Political Education: National Policy Comes of Age) on the people and events that have shaped federal K-12 education policy from the time of the Eisenhower administration through the passage last year of the 2001 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was published in November 2003 by Teachers College Press. He is also the co-editor of Minorities in Gifted and Special Education, published in 2002 by the National Academies Press. He has lectured on American education issues in Hong Kong, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Cross has a B.A. degree from Whittier College and a Master of Arts degree in Government from California State University, Los Angeles. He is married to the former Diane DeRoche, has two children, and resides in Danville, California.