Ronald Perlman
Dr. Ronald Perlman (rperlman@cntrmail.org) is president of The Center: Resources for Teaching and Learning. He is among the best known educational leaders in Illinois. Dr. Perlman is a longtime champion of high-quality educational services for all children, with emphasis on students who, because of linguistic, cultural or economic factors, are at-risk of academic failure.
Under Dr. Perlman’s leadership, The Center has played an important role in formulation of state educational policies for teaching and learning in early childhood, elementary and secondary education, with an additional focus on adult learning and such populations as immigrants and refugees. The Center also championed the use of emerging technologies to efficiently gather and analyze immediately useful assessment data. It pioneered the use of tablet computers and other mobile devices, together with on-line databases, to inform ongoing teaching techniques and lesson plans.
Dr. Perlman has been active, in addition, in public service. He is a member of the Illinois DREAM Fund Commission, which raises scholarship money and administers aspects of the 2011 Illinois DREAM Act to help provide college educations for undocumented children. He has been a frequent adviser to the Illinois General Assembly on legislation pertaining to language-minority populations.
Dr. Perlman is a former chair of the Illinois Advisory Council on Bilingual Education, and was a member of the advisory committee for the National Association for Bilingual Education. He was a fund-raising and content adviser to the Holocaust Foundation of Illinois, and is a former board member of the Jewish Community Center of Skokie, Illinois. He also served as a member of the Skokie District 73.5 school board for eight years. Dr. Perlman also helped create the Japanese Chamber of Commerce of Chicago education grant program, which has provided more than $2 million in funding for Illinois public schools for multicultural education.
Dr. Perlman holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Northwestern University.