Past Laureates

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The Brock Prize in Education Innovation recognizes an individual who has made a specific innovation or contribution to the science and art of education, resulting in a significant impact on the practice or understanding of the field of education. It must be a specific innovation or contribution that has the potential to provide long-term benefit to all humanity through change and improvement in education at any level, including new teaching techniques, the discovery of learning processes, the organization of a school or school system, the radical modification of government involvement in education, or other innovations.

Michael M. Crow

2024 Laureate — President of Arizona State University (ASU)

Dr. Michael M. Crow is the president of Arizona State University (ASU), where he has made significant contributions in the field of education, including his role in reimagining the university as an institution that is both widely accessible and excellent in all measures. Upon [...]

Sal Khan

2023 Laureate — Founder of Khan Academy

Sal Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone anywhere. Khan Academy's content and mastery learning platform has more than 145 million registered users from around the world and has been translated into more [...]

Sugata Mitra

2022 Laureate — Computer Scientist and Educational Theorist

Sugata Mitra is probably best known in the education community for developing the concept of self-organized learning environments (SOLEs) following his “Hole in the Wall” experiments in 1999, where he placed a computer in the wall of an Indian slum and observed that given the [...]

Sanjeev Arora

2021 Laureate — Director and Founder of Project ECHO®

Sanjeev Arora is the director and founder of Project ECHO® (Extension for Community Health Outcomes). He is a distinguished professor in internal medicine at the University of New Mexico and the recipient of the Heinz Award for Public Policy, Rosenthal Award, and American Telemedicine [...]

Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz (Diné)

2020 Laureate — Founder and Principal Consultant at First Light Education Project

Dr. Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz (Diné) is the founder and principal consultant at First Light Education Project and previously served as vice president for program initiatives at the American Indian College Fund in Denver, Colorado. In this role, she oversaw Wakanyeja, “Sacred [...]

Jeff Duncan-Andrade

2019 Laureate — Associate Professor, Founder of The Roses in Concrete Community School

Jeff Duncan-Andrade is an associate professor of raza studies in the department of Education Administration and Interdisciplinary Studies at San Francisco State University. Jeff also teaches high school in East Oakland, where for the past 18 years he has practiced and studied [...]

Lee Gordon

2018 Laureate — Founder of Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel

Lee Gordon initiated the founding of Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel, an Israeli non-profit organization that has created a network of integrated public schools serving Arab and Jewish children. Starting with just 50 students in 1998, Hand in [...]

Richard Miller

2017 Laureate — Founding President, Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA

Richard (Rick) K. Miller may be the most significant contributor to the reinvention of undergraduate engineering education in the 21st Century. A gentle but forceful voice for change, Miller gave up a deanship and tenure to be the first employee and founding president of the Olin College [...]

Cecilia Fierro

2016 Laureate — Professor, Universidad Iberoamericana León, Mexico

Cecilia Fierro is a professor and researcher who has worked alongside teachers and school leaders to develop practices that address needs of marginalized children, and build democratic schools in rural and impoverished neighborhoods. Her books have reached over 130,000 teachers in every corner of Mexico. She confronted [...]

Howard Gardner

2015 Laureate — John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard

Dr. Howard E. Gardner is an American developmental psychologist best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, as outlined in his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983). Gardner's theory has perhaps had the [...]

Ellen Moir

2014 Laureate — Founder and CEO of the New Teacher Center (NTC)

Ellen Moir is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the New Teacher Center (NTC), a national organization dedicated to improving student learning by accelerating the effectiveness of new teachers and school leaders. She is recognized as a passionate advocate for our nation’s [...]

Mike Feinberg & Dave Levin

2013 Laureates — Cofounders of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP)

Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin are cofounders of the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP. KIPP is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public charter schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. There [...]

Gloria Ladson-Billings

2012 Laureate — Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings is the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of three critically acclaimed books,The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers [...]

Linda Darling-Hammond

2011 Laureate — Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University

Darling-Hammond holds a B.A. from Yale University and a Ed.D in Urban Education from Temple University. Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond has dedicated her life’s work to the pursuit of excellence and equity [...]

Geoffrey Canada

2010 Laureate — President and CEO, Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc., New York

Geoffrey Canada’s life and career have intertwined to bring new insights and possibilities surrounding effective education in areas of urban poverty in America. As an educator, he has identified way to compensate for the barriers that torpedo student success. As [...]

Lawrence Lezotte

2009 Laureate — CEO and National Education Consultant, Effective Schools Products, Ltd.

Lawrence Lezotte, Ph.D., has devoted his career to helping schools educate all students. He is the chief executive officer and national education consultant for Effective School Products, Ltd. Lezotte is known as the preeminent spokesperson for continuous school improvement based on [...]

Robert J. Marzano

2008 Laureate — CEO and National Education Consultant, Effective Schools Productions, Ltd.

Over his 35 years in education, Dr. Robert Marzano has worked in every U.S. state. The central theme of his work has been translating research and theory into practical programs and tools for K-12 teachers and administrators. He is a Senior [...]

David W. & Roger T. Johnson

2007 Laureates — Co-directors of the Cooperative Learning Center, University of Minnesota

Roger and David Johnson are brothers and co-directors of the Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota. Since the mid-1960s, they have worked to implement cooperative learning and constructive conflict resolution procedures in all levels of schooling (preschool through graduate [...]

Douglas B. Reeves

2006 Laureate — Chairman and Founder, Center for Performance Assessment, Salem, Massachusetts

Dr. Douglas Reeves is chairman and founder of the Center for Performance Assessment, an international organization dedicated to improving student achievement and educational equity. Through its long-term relationships with school systems, the center helps educators and school leaders improve student achievement through practical and [...]

Beverly Daniel Tatum

2005 Laureate — President, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia

Tatum is recognized as the foremost authority on racial identity development theory. This theory, a positive sense of one's self as a member of one's groups as vital to psychological well-being, is proclaimed as a vital means to resolve multicultural issues in education and society. Her critically acclaimed [...]

Elliot W. Eisner

2004 Laureate — Lee Jacks Professor of Education and Professor of Art, Stanford University

Eisner works in three fields: arts in education, curriculum studies, and qualitative research methods. He has been especially interested in advancing the role of the arts in American education and in using the arts as models for improving educational practice [...]

David C. Berliner

2003 Laureate — Director, Education Policy Report Project, Arizona State University

Berliner is a noted authority on the phenomenon of teaching and related educational policies throughout his career. His model of how one develops from novice to expert has influenced teacher education programs worldwide. Work in school settings led him to believe that [...]

John I. Goodlad

2002 Laureate — President, Institute for Educational Inquiry; Founder, Center for Educational Renewal

For much of his career, Goodlad has been involved in an array of educational reform programs and projects and has engaged in large-scale studies of educational change, schooling, and teacher education. Most recently, he has inquired into [...]