Bolick is co-founder and Director of Litigation for the Washington D.C.-based Institute for Justice, begun in 1991 as the "nation's only libertarian public interest law firm" and as an alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union. The Institute for Justice represents parents and children in various legal cases across the country in support of school choice, including the Cleveland, Ohio lawsuit regarding a publicly funded scholarship program, where the Institute has joined with the state of Ohio to defend the state's voucher system.

Brennan is Ohio's largest operator of a publicly funded, for-profit school business, the White Hat Management Company, and an Akron, Ohio entrepreneur, developer, attorney, and major Republican Party donor. Brennan helped initiate the Cleveland voucher program in the mid-1990s and his White Hat company is now a major operator of Ohio charter schools, including Hope academies and Life Skills schools.

Bush is the governor of Texas and the leading Republican presidential candidate in the 2000 election.

Crew is the executive director of the University of Washington's new Institute for K-12 Leadership. He was chancellor of New York Public Schools for four years, one of the longest tenures of any recent chancellor. While leading the district of 1.1 million students, Crew ended the automatic promotion of failing students, changed the practice of giving lifelong job protection to principals, and persuaded the state Legislature to give the chancellor more say over the appointment of local superintendents. In news accounts, Crew blamed Mayor Rudolph Giuliani for his departure. The two had several disputes, including over a plan favored by the mayor to give public school students taxpayer-funded vouchers to use at private schools.

Finn is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and president and trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, where his primary focus is the reform of primary and secondary schooling. He was an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration and is co-author of Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education.

Gore is the Vice President and the leading Democratic presidential candidate in the 2000 election.

Ivins is a nationally syndicated columnist for her home paper, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram. A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she is the former co-editor of The Texas Observer, the former Rocky Mountain bureau chief for The New York Times, and co-author of Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, published in February 2000.

Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a long-time activist in the civil liberties field and church-state issues. From 1984 until 1991, he was legislative counsel in the Washington national office of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ who received his theology degree from Boston University School of Theology.

Galston is a professor and director of the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs. He served as the Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy in the Clinton Adminstration and is serving as a senior advisor to Vice President Al Gore during his 2000 campaign for the Presidency.

Hoxby is Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University and has conducted research examining the value of competition to public schools.

Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), and Director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Learning from School Choice and is an advocate of experimenting with voucher programs.