U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has appointed Valerie Reyna, professor and director of extension in the Department of Human Development in the College of Human Ecology, to serve on the President's National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The panel advises the president and secretary of education "with respect to the conduct, evaluation and effective use of the results of research related to proven, evidence-based mathematics instruction in order to foster greater knowledge and improved performance in mathematics among American students."

Her term, effective immediately, ends April 2008, unless extended by the president. Reyna is one of 20 members outside the federal government appointed to the panel.

Reyna, who joined the Cornell faculty last year, was one of the highest-ranking scientists to serve in the federal government when she was a senior research adviser to the assistant secretary for research, U.S. Department of Education, from 2001 to 2003. While there, she served as an architect of the new Institute for Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

Reyna supports the use of scientific research in educational practice, as required in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and wrote about that support in the book "The No Child Left Behind Legislation: Educational Research and Federal Funding" (Information Age Publishing, 2005). The legislation mandates that all teaching methods and programs -- from Head Start and reading interventions to after-school and drop-out prevention programs -- be based on scientific research that shows the method or program works. It is scheduled for reauthorization in 2007.

Reyna received her B.A. (1976) from Clark University and Ph.D. (1981) in experimental psychology from Rockefeller University.