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Harvard Graduate School of Education

The Askwith Education Forum , at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, is endowed through the generosity of Patricia Askwith Kenner and other members of the Askwith family, and acts as a galvanizing force for debate and conversation about education in its narrowest and broadest perspectives. Each year, the Forum welcomes a number of prominent people from diverse fields to speak about issues relevant to education and children. Recent topics have included immigration, values, affirmative action, education reform, and the arts. All of these events are free and open to the public.break

http://www.gse.harvard.edu/askwith

School District Reform: Leadership in Uncertain Times

Mon, Apr 24, 2006

This panel, moderated by Robert Peterkin, Francis Keppel Professor of Educational Policy and Administration and director of the Urban Superintendents Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, gives Tom Payzant and Arlene Ackerman, two outstanding Superintendents, an opportunity to share their experiences and reflect on how to improve some of our most challenging districts. Both Tom Payzant and Arlene Ackerman have proven that a superintendent committed to a theory of action can make a difference in some of our nation's most complex districts. Both Payzant and Ackerman have also shattered the "urban myth" that large city superintendents only remain in office for less than three years. Payzant's 10-year tenure in Boston and Ackerman's six-year tenure in San Francisco have been characterized by real change focused on improving teaching and learning in schools. Both superintendents have demonstrated that it is possible to adopt a plan for reform and find the needed talent, resources, and support to make it happen.

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Back to School: Path to Universal Primary Education

Tue, Mar 13, 2007

Wide Angle producer Pamela Hogan screens her film *Back to School*, and a panel discusses universal primary education. Across the world, more than 100 million children are out of school this year. In the developing world, one in four children drop out before completing four years of education. Nearly one billion adults, one sixth of the world's people, are illiterate. In 2003, producers from New York's Wide Angle world affairs television series traveled to Afghanistan, India, Benin, Brazil, Romania, Kenya, and Japan to film the stories of seven children beginning their first year of formal schooling, some against great odds. Now, three years later, the filmmakers have returned with *Back to School*, a film which revisits these children as they continued, or fell behind, on their paths through elementary school. The speakers in this discussion include David Bloom, Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Harvard School of Public Health; Matthew Jukes, assistant professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of International Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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Consuming Kids: Hostile Takeover

Wed, Oct 13, 2004

Susan Linn, instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Media Center at Judge Baker Children's Center, discusses how all aspects of children's lives, including their health, education, creativity, and values, are at risk of being compromised by their status in the marketplace. Interweaving real-life stories of marketing to children, child development theory, and the latest research, Linn reveals the magnitude of this problem and show what can be done about it.

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Cognitive Science and the Science of Educational Policy

Thu, Nov 18, 2004

Michael Feuer, PhD, of the National Research Council, discusses the frayed link between cognitive science and the science of education policy. He argues that patching this link encourages the development of more rational programs of educational improvement, and more reasonable expectations for reform and research. Dr Feuer explains how cognitive science has changed the way we understand and study human decision-making and rational judgment, and is a source of much of what we now know (or believe) about teaching and learning. However, this 'science of rationality' has thus far had little impact on how we think about education policy and research. In this first lecture from a series, titled "The Science of Rationality and the Rationality of Science," Dr Feuer reviews several decades of cognitive research, providing the basis for subsequent lectures that focus on the complexities of education policy and research, and the need for a cognitively appropriate approach to these issues. Michael Feuer is executive director of the division of behavioral and social sciences and education at the National Research Council of the National Academies. He holds a PhD in public policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from Students

Tue, Oct 19, 2004

Kathleen Cushman, shares surprising advice from teens she interviewed for her most recent book about how to engage, motivate, and challenge high school students. Kathleen Cushman, a journalist specializing in education and school reform, discusses her latest book, *Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students*. Ms. Cushman interviewed forty teenagers about what teachers could do to better engage, motivate, and challenge high school students. She explains the remarkable insights they offered for improving classroom life and relationships between teachers and students. Every teenager is different, these young people say, but they all need teachers who know them well without violating their boundaries, and who challenge them without humiliating or ignoring them. Ms. Cushman's work offers invaluable techniques for increasing engagement and motivation, teaching demanding academic material, reaching English language learners, and creating classroom cultures where respect and success go hand in hand.

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Chinese Americans: Compelled to Excel

Wed, Dec 8, 2004

Vivian Louie, drawing on interviews with second-generation Chinese Americans attending a public, commuter university and a highly selective private university, discusses the power that race and class play in shaping educational experiences. Louie's work is introduced by Mary Waters, chair of the department of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. Panelists will include Suzanne Lee, principal of the Josiah Quincy School in Boston, and Peter Law, senior guidance counselor at Charlestown High School. In the contemporary American imagination, Asian Americans are considered the quintessential immigrant success story, a powerful example of how the culture of immigrant families (rather than race and class) matters in education and upward mobility. Louie finds that Chinese immigrant families see higher education as a necessary safeguard against potential racial discrimination, and class shapes different paths to college. The views and experiences of Chinese Americans with schooling and the identities they are forming have much to do with the opportunities, challenges and contradictions that immigrants and their children confront in the United States.

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Closing the Achievement Gap

Mon, Dec 13, 2004

Richard Rothstein, former education columnist for the New York Times discusses factors contributing to the race achievement gap. While policymakers attempt to narrow the achievement gap by implementing school reform efforts targeting accountability, leadership, and teacher quality, they neglected other critical social reforms. Rothstein is accompanied by a panel including: Ronald Ferguson, lecturer in public policy, Kennedy School of Government; Dan Koretz, professor of education, Harvard Graduate School of Education; and Donna Rodrigues, program director, Jobs for the Future, and founder of the University Park Campus School in Worcester, MA. Robert Schwartz, lecturer on education, moderates.

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Fragments: Links between Cognitive Science and Education Policy

Thu, Feb 24, 2005

Michael J. Feuer of the National Research Council presents the second in a series of lectures on links between cognitive science and education policy. This lecture focuses on sources of complexity in the American school system and implications for the design of rational models of education policy. Feuer emphasizes the intended and unintended effects of the fragmented system of school governance that exists in the US, the limitations this imposes on the use of existing measurement tools to gauge individual and institutional progress, and the problems that arise from accountability systems that inadvertently create incentives for opportunistic behavior among students, teachers, and school authorities. Given these constraints, Feuer argues for a new approach to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of alternative governance models, defining rational goals for education policy, and setting reasonable expectations for improvement. **Michael J. Feuer** is Executive Director of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education at the National Research Council of the National Academies.

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"L" is for Literacy: Reading with Children

Wed, Mar 2, 2005

Harvard Graduate School of Education celebrates the work of Dr. Seuss, with a forum to discuss children's literacy, the effects of parent-child and child self-motivated book reading, and child literacy programs. Initially created as a one-day event to celebrate reading, the National Education Association's Read Across America has grown into a nationwide initiative that promotes reading every day of the year and culminates on March 2nd, the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

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Becoming Literate: Baltimore Early Childhood Project

Tue, Mar 8, 2005

Robert Serpell, vice chancellor at the University of Zambia, discusses the results of his five-year study tracing literacy development in pre-kindergarten through third-grade children from low- and middle- income families of European and African heritage in Baltimore. His presentation centers on how the concept of intimate family culture can assist in moving the discussion of educational disadvantage beyond stereotyped accounts of various social addresses. Catherine Snow, the Henry Lee Shattuck professor of Education, will provide an introduction.

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