Mike is a Senior Fellow at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), University of
Pennsylvania, and member of the Education Graduate Group. He is also Director of the
Mid-Career Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership and Co-Director of the
Inter-American Educational Leadership Network. 

Before coming to Penn in the spring of 2007, he served as Vice President of Professional
Services for Teachscape, a for-profit blended technology services company, where he
managed all service engagements nationally. He is the former Executive Director for K-12
Professional Development, The College Board, where he managed programs supporting over
500,000 middle and high school teachers, college faculty, coordinators, and
administrators, including those involved in the Advanced Placement Program. He founded,
developed, and managed a program development and operations department with
responsibilities including new product development, in-person training, web services,
electronic and print publications, regional office operational support, marketing and
research. A former high school teacher in Cleveland, New York, and Lima, Peru, he taught
in and managed the Fellows in Teaching Program and Urban Fellow Program at Teachers
College, Columbia University prior to joining the College Board. 

Dr. Johanek currently serves as Executive Committee Board Member of Research for Action,
a non-profit organization engaged in education research and evaluation, and on the
Advisory Council of the Penn Center for Educational Leadership. Prior to serving as a
reviewer for the U.S. Department of Education in the 2010 Race to the Top competition, he
served on the department’s Working Group for Postsecondary Linkage Efforts to Improve
College Readiness and on the independent Annenberg Commission on Public Schools for their
Institutions of Democracy Project. He served as co-PI and advisor in several National
Science Foundation-funded professional development research projects, on the National
Education Advisory Board for the French & Indian War 250th Anniversary Commemoration,
and on the Organization of American Historians-Advanced Placement Joint Advisory Board on
Teaching the U.S. History Survey. He recently served on the Alumni Council at Teachers
College, Columbia University, and on the Board of Trustees of The Concord Review. He has
recently served as a peer reviewer for AERA, UCEA, Theory and Research in Education, and
the History of Education Society. He has occasionally taught at New York University’s
Steinhardt School of Education and consulted for school districts. Current interests
include community-centered and place-based approaches to education, citizenship
development, and educational leadership in the U.S. and Latin America. He teaches as
Profesor Invitado Internacional at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. 

Articles

PDF

Reinventing Leaders for a New Era in Education Management (with James Lytle), District Management Journal (2010)
 

Link

School Reform That Matters, @ Penn GSE: A Review of Research (2009)

A "loving critic" of the U.S., Dean Kishore Mahbubani at the National University of Singapore,...

 

PDF

The Enduring Appeal of Community Schools (with Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett), American Educator (2009)
 

PDF

Race, Gender and Ethnicity in the United States History Survey: Introduction, GSE Publications (2004)

It is one of the great pleasures and challenges of the Advanced Placement Program that...

 

PDF

Accounting for Citizenship: Are our expectations for civic education too modest? (with John Puckett), GSE Publications (2004)

In an era of tests and standards, how do our schools score in preparing citizens?...

 

Books

Contributions to Books

PDF

Enhanced Academic Connections -- Deweyan Waste, Ecological Pipelines, and Intellectual Vitality (with Donald M. Stewart), Higher Education and the Schools (1998)