Executive Director Warren Simmons Speaks at Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn Summit in DC (12/8-10)

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Warren Simmons was a featured speaker at the Schott Foundation’s National Opportunity to Learn Education Summit — entitled Uniting Communities for Education Justice & Action — on 12/8-10 in Washington, D.C. He joined an all-star line-up of speakers including Diane Ravitch, PEN’s Wendy Puriefoy, CADRE co-founder & director Maisie Chin, The Advancement Project’s Judith Browne Dianis, Mass. Budget & Policy Center President Noah Berger, civil rights organizer Bernard Lafayette, Community Coalition’s Alberto Retana, and KOCO’s Jitu Brown, as well as Alliance for Quality Education colleague Zakiyah Ansari. The summit attracted numerous grassroots advocates, philanthropic partners, policymakers, youth organizers, national organizations and researchers committed to closing the opportunity gap.

AISR’s Straight Talk on Teacher Quality report was very well received at the Summit. It was referred to several times by panelists and members of the audience including Pedro Noguera and Wendy Pureifoy. Following a theme set by Diane Ravitch’s presentation, many of the sessions focused on the importance of organizing communities to push back on a federal/state education agenda that stresses the importance of standards, accountability and performance management but falls short of addressing how to build instructional capacity to address an achievement gap that is highly correlated with poverty.

The sessions also highlighted the top-down nature of accountability and reform noting that states get to hold schools and school districts accountable while avoiding their responsibility to provided adequate funding and support, particularly with regard to teacher and principal preparation. Finally, the participants underscored the importance of uniting the civil rights community around a shared agenda for reform that embraced the need to address education reform alongside of child, family and community development.

Additionally, the Annenberg Institute's “Parent Power” film was screened at the  Education Summit on Saturday, December 10 in Washington, D.C.