Art Coleman is a managing partner and co-founder at EducationCounsel LLC. With an extensive background providing legal, policy, strategic planning, and advocacy services to educators throughout the country, he focuses on issues related to 21^st-century education reform efforts, including those focused on college and career-ready policies and on pipeline issues that address key questions of equal access and educational diversity.

Coleman’s work centers on:

• The development of K-20 assessment, accountability, and accreditation policies, including a focus on test design and test-use issues;
• The development of higher-education student enrollment (e.g., financial aid, admission, and recruitment policies) and faculty-hiring policies designed to enhance access and the educational benefits of diversity; and
• The design and implementation of strategies to support not-for-profit organizations that seek to align their educationally focused goals and strategies with national, federal, and state 21^st-century policy agendas and reform efforts.

From 1993 until 2000, Coleman served as senior policy advisor to the assistant secretary for civil rights and then deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. For over six years, he was responsible for the development of federal civil rights policy in education and enforcement of relevant federal laws centered on issues relating to standards reform, test use, students with disabilities, English language learners, affirmative action, sexual and racial harassment, and gender equity in athletics.

Coleman has testified before the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on key legal and policy issues; he has served as an adjunct professor at two law schools and at one graduate school of education; and he has spoken widely and published extensively regarding legal and policy issues in education.

Coleman is a board member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys and National School Boards Association Council of School Attorneys. He is a former member of the advisory board for the Alliance for Excellent Education.