2009-10 Practitioner Symposia

A critical determinant of the Dewey Seminar's success at advancing a national conversation about education will be the capacity of the seminar to incorporate insights from the field and to draw on the reflective intelligence of the country's most imaginative and effective education practitioners. The educational sphere in the U.S. has seen significant experimentation in the last twenty years, particularly with public education but often through markets, non profits, and foundations. Often the experimenters-- operators of charter schools, public school leaders, or educational entrepreneurs building new or supplementary programs--intend to provide analysis of their work in order that it can be disseminated and duplicated. But in the event, they are typically too busy simply operating their enterprises to engage either in adequately systematic data production or in theoretical reflection. Also, they often hope to lead by establishing an example of a successful reform that can then be replicated. But as Charles Payne puts it, educational reform in the U.S. is bedeviled by the replication problem: replication occurs very infrequently.

Here too there lies an important intellectual opportunity and challenge. The Dewey Seminar will organize "practitioner symposia" to bring practitioners together with scholars so that we may translate insights gained from recent experimentation into enduring knowledge about education and democracy.

Practitioner Symposia
White-Levy Room

Symposium 1: Policy
Frederick M. Hess, Resident Scholar and Director of Education Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Andrew Rotherham, Co-Founder and Co-Director, Education Sector
Symposium 2: Urban Reform
Joshua Edelman, Deputy Chief of School Innovation (OSI) for the DC Public Schools.
Timothy Knowles, Lewis-Sebring Director, Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago
Symposium 3: Policy
Thomas Payzant, Professor of Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Symposium 4: Law, Civil Rights, and Education
Howard Manning, Superior Court Judge, Wake County (North Carolina)
Michael Rebell, Executive Director, Campaign for Educational Equity, Professor of Law and Educational Practice, Teachers College, Columbia University, and adjunct professor of law, Columbia Law School.
Symposium 5:

Technology and Education
Larry Berger, CEO and Co-Founder, Wireless Generation
David Coleman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Grow Network
Jose Ferreira, Chief Executive Officer, Knewton
Larry Rosenstock, Chief Executive Officer, High Tech High
Dovi Weiss, Co-Founder and Chief Pedagogical Officer, Time-to-Know

Symposium 6: Reform Efforts
Tony Bryk, the Spencer Foundation Professor of Organizational Studies in Education and Business, Stanford University
Symposium 7: Immigration, Religion, and Education
Mushirul Hasan, Vice Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia (Delhi)
Djelloul Seddiki, Director of the Al-Ghazali Institute of the Mosque of Paris, France
Claire Sylvan, Founding Executive Director, Internationals Network for Public Schools
Symposium 8: Psychology
Joshua Aronson, Associate Professor of Applied Psychology, New York University
Maggie Schein, Founder and Director, P.I.E.R. Educational Consultants
Symposium 9: Higher Education
Anthony Marx, President, Amherst College
Diana Chapman Walsh, former President, Wellesley College
Freeman Hrabowski, President, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Symposium 10: Foundations and Education Reform
Michele Cahill, Vice President, National Programs and Program Director, Urban Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York
Michael McPherson, President, Spencer Foundation