Education Experience

Anne Barab is passionate about public education and believes that every district can achieve Adequate Yearly Progress. She speaks from experience as a former school board member of a large, diverse and very successful school district in North Texas. Her programs pay tribute to the enormous contribution of teachers and celebrate the sheer joy of helping students learn.

As an education leader who has been in the trenches, Anne's core messages help educators know how to:

• Improve student achievement;
• Think like a leader in the classroom;
• Thrive with the win/lose challenge of AYP, and
• Lead teachers and schools through change.

Anne served three terms as a board member of a very diverse school district in Texas. During her nine year tenure, she helped her district transition from a firestorm of community controversy to being named one of the Top 100 Districts in the U.S. by The Wall Street Journal.

She earned the Master Trustee designation awarded by the Texas Association of School Boards and completed over 450 hours of school board training. Since Texas is the father of NCLB, Anne actively participated in re-engineering her district. Passing rates for white students rose from 70% to 91%, while African American and Hispanic passing rates rose from around 35% to about 85%. At the same time, the board cut 25% from the total operating budget.

Today, Richardson ISD is the largest and most diverse district in Texas to achieve "Recognized" in the state accountability system three years in a row, 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08. The district is 34,000 students, 93 languages, 49% economically disadvantaged and 20% ESL. These results are the fruition of policies begun during Anne's tenure on the board. Anne has dealt with the same problems every educator in the country is facing, namely declining dollars in the face of rising student performance expectations and punitive accountability legislation. Her programs provide education leaders strategies for creating extraordinary learning communities.

In her business life Anne served as Chief Operating Officer of a $1 billion mortgage bank, leading a team effort to save the company from bankruptcy. And she has owned her own consulting firm for twenty years. Ten years ago Anne accepted her calling to become a motivational and inspirational speaker for audiences around the world. She's written two books and numerous articles about education and family living. However, her greatest claim to fame is being married for thirty-seven long years to the same engineer, having three children who are not currently in jail, and being voted Best Smelling Mom by her son's first grade.