Past Events

There is vital economic dimension to the American promise of a free, quality pubic education for all of its youth. In its simplest aspect, government needs to provide adequate funding to public schools. As the recent wave of teacher strikes and protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona have highlighted, many states are far from meeting that basic obligation. A more complex, but no less, important economic aspect is how government funds are distributed and used. The growth of charter schools, and the resultant diversion of public funds from public district schools to charter schools, had added a new element in the distribution and use of public funds, raising a series of questions. To what extent do charter schools, especially in large numbers, destabilize the economies of public district schools by disrupting economies of scales? To what extent do charter schools create inefficiencies and redundancies in the provision of public education? To what extent do charter schools serve fewer high needs students – students with special needs, English Language Learners, students living in poverty – for whom a quality education is more costly, leading to an inequitable distribution of resources? And to the extent that these problems of funding exist, what should be done to correct them? From a variety of perspectives and grounded in studies in different states, our panel addressed these questions.  Watch the video.

Academic freedom is best understood, John Dewey once wrote, as freedom of education: the freedom of students to learn the knowledge and skills of citizenship in a democratic society and the freedom of teachers to teach in ways that cultivate these skills and knowledge. As such, academic freedom is not only indispensable for the educational mission of the university, but vital to the safeguarding of freedom in the larger society. Dewey’s vision of academic freedom as a public good, essential for democracy itself to flourish, has come under attack in recent years. In a hyper-partisan moment, when issues as different as climate change and gun violence have been crudely polarized and politicized, academic freedom too has been targeted by those who believe that the university should not be teaching critical and independent thinking, but propagating a particular political ideology. Provocateurs now use public events to spark disruption, initiate violence and attack intellectual diversity on campus, rather than engaging in productive dialogue and mutual learning. From a variety of different perspectives, our panel addressed the issues raised by the need to defend academic freedom in an age of political polarization. Watch the video.

Puerto Rico: The Road to Recovery and Reconstruction (#rebuildPR), March 1, 2018, co-sponsored by Albert Shanker Institute, American Federation of Teachers and Hispanic Federation. With the future of Puerto Rico hanging in the balance, this national conference focused on what needs to be done to rebuild the Puerto Rican economy and its educational system in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria.  Watch the video.

 

Today, the U.S. finds itself in a crisis of democracy, in which the future of our liberties and our republican form of government hang in the balance. Almost daily, we see attacks against the rights of citizenship, especially on the right to vote, and against the rule of law, an independent judiciary and a free press. Demagogic attacks are regularly launched against “other” Americans—immigrants and refugees, people of color, Muslims and Jews, and LGBTQ people. What role should American education play in responding to this crisis of democracy? How should we teach democratic citizenship in our schools and universities to ensure that the “whole mass of the people” can see that it is their interest to preserve the republican government established by the founders to sustain liberty and democracy? How can America’s educators ensure that their classrooms and lecture halls are places where students learn to recognize demagoguery, oppose bigotry and resist tyranny? Two of our nation’s leading public intellectuals, Harvard professor Danielle Allen and Yale professor Timothy Snyder, joined AFT President Randi Weingarten to discuss these questions. . Watch the video.