About

Tony Donen

Tony Donen has worked for the past ten years as a high school principal. Originally born in South Africa, Tony grew up in Canada and then the United States, where he graduated from high school in New Jersey. Tony received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Virginia Tech University, a master’s degree in teaching from East Tennessee State University, and his doctorate degree in educational leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University.

Tony has worked as a teacher, coach, and administrator for the past 17 years in education. His leadership has resulted in school recognition on Newsweek’s list of top public high schools, multiple years of 96% plus school graduation rates, and a standards-based implementation for ACT that resulted in two to three point school-wide gains on the ACT assessment. Tony is currently principal of a new STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) magnet school in Chattanooga, TN. He is also the lead author for the book Grades Don’t Matter: Using Assessment to Measure True Learning, co-author for The Grades Game, an article published in the Principal Leadership magazine, and lead author in the book Making Grades Matter, which is coming out in 2013.