Thursday, July 09, 2009

Future of Education Interview July 16th: "Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education"

Date: Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Length: 1 hour including Q&A
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Join us as we talk with Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb, the authors of Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education.

Overview (from book jacket):

"Technology has transformed all aspects of our everyday lives. From online banking to social networking, we communicate, connect, and consume in ways radically different from the past. Yet, the average classroom is not that different from the classroom of fifty years ago."

What's wrong with this picture? Terry M. Moe and John E. Chubb, two thought leaders on education reform, tell a dramatic story about the pitched battle to bring about real change and improvement to America's schools—a battle that pits the innovative forces of technology against the entrenched interests that powerfully protect the educational status quo.

The timing could not be more critical, as the United States struggles to keep pace with a world economy that places a growing premium on education. Right now, technology has a tremendous capacity to promote learning—for all students, regardless of background or neighborhood—by opening up a dazzling array of new opportunities that can literally customize education to the needs, schedules, styles, and interests of each student. But it is being blocked in the political process.
Controversial and compelling, Liberating Learning maps out a dynamic vision of the nation's educational future, showing how the ideas and innovations of technology will ultimately transform the public schools to the great benefit of the nation and its children—and how learning will be liberated from the special interests, and from the dead hand of the past.

Guests:

Terry M. Moe is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of the Institution's Koret Task Force on K–12 education, and the William Bennett Munro Professor of political science at Stanford University.
He is an expert on educational policy, U.S. political institutions, and organization theory. His current research projects are concerned with school choice, public bureaucracy, and the presidency. Moe has written extensively on educational issues. His book (with John E. Chubb), Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, is among the most influential and controversial works on education to be published during the last decade, and has been a major force in the movement for school choice in America and abroad. He is also the author of Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public, the first detailed analysis of public opinion on the voucher issue. In addition, he is editor of A Primer on America's Schools (Hoover Press, 2001), which provides a critical assessment of the current state of American education, and Private Vouchers (Hoover Press, 1995), the first book to be published on the growing movement among private-sector foundations to provide vouchers for low-income children.
More generally, Moe has written extensively on public bureaucracy and the presidency, and he is a leading figure in both fields. His influential articles on bureaucracy include "The New Economics of Organization," "The Politics of Bureaucratic Structure," "Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story," and "The Institutional Foundations of Democratic Government: A Comparison of Presidential and Parliamentary Systems." Among his articles on the presidency are "The Politicized Presidency," "Presidents, Institutions, and Theory," and "The President and the Bureaucracy: The Presidential Advantage." In 2005, Moe received the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation Prize for Excellence in Education. In addition to his positions at Stanford and Hoover, Moe has served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C.

John E. Chubb is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education . He is also chief development officer and cofounder of EdisonLearning, a company that for nearly twenty years has partnered with public school districts and charter school boards nationwide to provide innovative schools and education programs, with a focus on disadvantaged students. He has previously served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and faculty member at Stanford University. He has also served as an adviser, consultant, and speaker for the White House and for many state governments, public and private school systems, and nonprofit organizations. Chubb is the author of several books, including Liberating Learning and Politics, Markets, and America's Schools, both coauthored with Hoover Institution senior fellow and fellow K–12 Education Task Force member Terry M. Moe; andLearning From No Child Left Behind as well as Within Our Reach: How America Can Educate Every Child, an assessment by the Koret Task Force. Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools is an analysis of 500 public and private high schools based on data gathered from more than 20,000 students, teachers, and principals. It argues for the introduction of free market principals to the American education system. Articles written by Chubb have appeared in the Brookings Review, American Political Science Review, Public Interest, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, and other publications. Chubb coedited Can the Government Govern? with Hoover Institution distinguished visiting fellow and fellow K–12 Education Task Force member Paul E. Peterson. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and an A.B. summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, both in political science.

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