Timothy Knowles is the John Dewey Director of the Urban Education Institute and the John Dewey Clinical Professor in the Committee on Education. The mission of the Urban Education Institute is to create new knowledge and educational models to address one of the nation's most significant and enduring questions: how do we produce reliably excellent schooling for children growing up in urban America?

He was deputy superintendent for teaching and learning at the Boston Public Schools from 1998 to 2002. At the Boston Public Schools, he has been responsible for school improvement and professional development, developing and sustaining community partnerships, and supervising principals and district staff. He was co–director of the Boston Annenberg Challenge, a $30 million effort to improve literacy instruction, and has served in a number of other administrative positions, including founding director of a full–service, kindergarten–through–eighth–grade school in Bedford–Stuyvesant, New York City.