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Featured Past Event
The Intersection of Democracy and Public Education
The Shanker Institute and Education International are both celebrating milestone anniversaries in 2023. Both organizations share a common origin, Albert Shanker cofounded EI and was the inspiration for the ASI. To recognize the common origin and priorities of each organization, strengthening public education and committed to democracy, this Panel Discussion & Anniversary Celebration of the Albert Shanker Institute (25 Years) and Education International (30 Years) was held ahead of the International Summit on the Teaching Profession to take advantage of both organizations’ leaders being in Washington, DC at the same time.
Featured Past Event
In its most recent set of decisions in 2022, the extremist majority of the Supreme Court has struck down long-standing precedents and long-enduring laws, with the elimination of guarantees for many of our rights and freedoms. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), AFT President Randi Weingarten and a distinguished panel discussed these decisions of the court and their impact on abridging Americans’ basic freedoms and what we can do. Watch the Video.Past Events
Featured Past Event
Segregation and School Funding: How Housing Discrimination Reproduces Unequal Opportunity
Watch the discussion about the historical and contemporary relationship between racial segregation and K-12 school funding based on the Institute's new report.
Dec102013
Past Event
Early Childhood Education: The Word Gap & The Common Core
Do the Common Core State Standards represent a threat or an opportunity for the early childhood field?
Dec102013
Past Event
Early Childhood Education: The Word Gap & the Common Core
Given states’ difficulties in implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) thoughtfully, many early childhood educators have begun to worry about what the NAEYC refers to as “a downward pressure of increased academic focus and more narrowed instructional approaches.”
Nov132013
Past Event
Quality Assessments for Educational Excellence
The conversation focused on federal and state policy on student assessment, with an eye to identifying policies that would promote best assessment practices.
Oct102013
Past Event
Fulfilling The Promise Of a Quality Education for All: 21st Century Career & Technical Education
This New York City conference (co-sponsored with the UFT) was designed to allow participants to share their expertise in CTE policy, practice, and research, as well as to deepen their understanding of how quality CTE can serve to expand the educational and career horizons of all students.
Oct92013
Past Event
Civic Purposes of Public Education and the Common Core
One of the primary purposes of public education is to foster an engaged and well-educated citizenry: For a democracy to function, the "people" who rule must be prepared to take on the duties and the rights of citizens.
Sep112013
Past Event
The Use And Misuses of Value-Added in Teacher Evaluations: Three Perspectives
Nationally-recognized experts, Linda Darling Hammond, Douglas Harris and Thomas Kane will present and discuss concrete proposals for how to incorporate test-based performance measures into new teacher evaluations
Sep22013
Past Event
Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education Conversation Series, 2013-2014
Co-sponsored with the American Federation of Teachers and held the second Wednesday of every month during the school year, this series is designed to engender lively and informative conversations on important educational issues.
Jun32013
Past Event
The Albert Shanker Institute hosted a meeting and reception for Afro-Cuban civil rights activists Leonardo Calvo, Manuel Cuesta Morua, and Rafel Campoamor on June 3 from in Washington, D.C.
Mar12013
Past Event
Good Schools VIII / Doing Assessment Right
In the wake of No Child Left Behind, the demands on educational testing are heavier than ever – from diagnosis to instructional improvement to gate-keeping to accountability for students, teachers, and schools. What would a useful assessment system look like at the state and local levels? What are the conceptual and practical issues that must be confronted to achieve such a system?
Nov162011
Past Event
The Role of Curriculum in Early Childhood Teacher Preparation Programs
This workshop session offered an overview of research on why the early acquisition of broad content knowledge is crucial to young children’s later academic success, and provides a guide so that the design, choice, and use of teacher training materials is improved by careful focus on content suitable for three and four year olds.
Nov162011
Past Event
Good Schools VII / Turning Around Low-Performing Schools
Districts across the country are struggling to improve low-performing schools, many using school improvement formulas imbedded in state and federal law. But what can research tell us about the relevance of family and school context to learning?
Nov82010
Past Event
The quest to define and measure teacher effectiveness has sparked useful research on many different fronts, using different means to gauge various important outcomes. But it has also prompted many ieffective, punitive redesigns of teacher evaluation systems. How do we create a system that is clear, fair, and useful for improving practice?
May12010
Past Event
Conversation on Civic Education
In May 2010, ASI gathered together a remarkable group of researchers, policymakers, journalists and other leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., on May 3 for a thoughtful, in-depth, off-the-record discussion on the role of civic education in the United States.
Apr262010
Past Event
The fifth meeting of district partners in the Albert Shanker Institute’s “good schools” seminar series was convened in the wake of the first round of the Obama Administration’s $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition. Although only two states were declared as winners, scores of others made plans and passed laws that changed state education systems in ways that could be positive or negative, depending on the care with which these changes are planned and implemented.
Feb162010
Past Event
Experts Debate Role of Career and Technical Education
Education reform will fail a vast number of U.S. students unless the role of career and technical education (CTE, formerly called vocational education) is reconsidered, recast and placed in the mainstream of K-12 curriculum design.
Feb92010
Past Event
In this February, 2010 off-the-record Conversation, top federal and state policymakers, educators, business and labor leaders, practitioners, researchers and others discussed the achievements and challenges facing high quality CTE.
Jun12009
Past Event
In June 2009 the Institute sponsored a two-day conference on The Financial Crisis and Worker Rights in China: What Has The Recession Done to Prospects for True Worker Representation? See the agenda and the bios.
Apr192009
Past Event
In addition to shoring up decimated education budgets, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is a possible funding source for state and local education reform efforts. This seminar examines what the law really says and the sorts of projects it might fund to: improve teacher quality, develop effective curriculum, improve the achievement of low-performing students, develop useful assessments, etc.
Mar312009
Past Event
Assisting Independent Trade Unions in Cuba
In cooperation with the Committee for Free Trade Unionism (CFTU) headed by AFL-CIO President Emeritus Tom Donahue, Freedom House, the National Endowment for Democracy and the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Fund, the Institute sponsored a conference in April 2009 which examined current conditions on workers in Cuba and the prospects for change on the island nation suffering under political repression.
Nov182008
Past Event
Good Schools III / Teacher Pay and Staffing Policies: What Works, What Doesn’t
In this November 2008 Good Schools Seminar, panelists including Doug Harris, David Osher, and Randi Weingarten discuss the evidence and policy on compensation and staffing policies for teachers in the U.S.
May12008
Past Event
Creating Jobs: Delivering Education and Skills; Expanding Labor’s Role
This June 2008 meeting focused on three priorities: (1) the need for a seamless web of providers from high schools to community colleges and universities to unions and employers; (2) technology and how teaching is delivered; and (3) access to learning in multiple settings.
Jan282008
Past Event
Good Schools II / Developing the Teaching Corps We Need
This seminar series is part of an effort to build a network of union leaders, district superintendents, and researchers to work collaboratively on improving public education through a focus on teaching.
Jan12008
Past Event
The Shanker Institute sponsored a seminar on January 15–16, 2008 in Washington, D.C. focused on the implications and impact of recently enacted labor law reform in China entitled “Labor Law Reform in China: What are the Implications for Worker Rights? For Political Liberalization?”
Jun32007
Past Event
Good Schools I / Unions, Teaching Quality and Student Achievement
This is the first in a series of two-day seminars, designed to help build a network of union leaders, district superintendents, and researchers to work collaboratively on improving public education through a focus on teaching.