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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.
May12007
Past Event
What Do We Really Know About High School Dropout Rates & What Can Be Done To Improve Them?
The reliability of the data on high school dropout and graduation rates and the best way to calculate them have recently become the subject of intense debate, often generating more heat than light.
May12007
Past Event
Middle East Leadership Study Trip
The Albert Shanker Institute, in partnership with the AFT, organized an eight-person union leadership study trip to the Middle East in May 2007.
Feb12007
Past Event
The Challenge for Democracy in the Middle East: The Art of the Possible
The Institute sponsored this conference on the challange of developing practical international programs to implement the traditional commitment of the labor movement to democracy and democratic institutions in the core Middle East region. It challenged participants to help conceive innovative, practical program approaches for the Middle East region.
Jun12006
Past Event
Performance-Based Pay in Public Education
Across the country, policymakers are promoting or implementing plans to encourage excellent teaching by linking some portion of teachers’ pay to their performance or to the performance of their schools or students. While these proposals have generated a lot of heated discussion, most of the debate has centered around issues of theory or politics, not efficacy. What is the empirical evidence on the effects of performance-based pay plans, in general? In the public sector? In education? And what can research and experience tell us about the factors that make the implementation of some plans more or less successful?
May182006
Past Event
Background Knowledge & Reading Proficiency
Research has demonstrated that students’ vocabulary and background knowledge are vital to reading comprehension, and that poor children and struggling readers are disproportionately disadvantaged by this fact. What are the implications of these findings for improving curriculum and instruction at the elementary and secondary levels? And how do schools impart this knowledge to students who don’t read well enough to acquire it from the written word?
Apr52006
Past Event
Democracy and Worker Rights: A Discussion of Labor's Approach to China
On April 6-7, 2006, the Institute sponsored a lively discussion among representatives from nine AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions on the U.S.labor movement’s differing approaches to the increasing economic dominance of an ongoing worker rights repression in mainland China. After opening remarks by AFT and Shanker Institute President McElroy, participants heard from two prominent China experts, Andrew Nathan (Columbia University) and James Mann (School for Advanced International Studies).
May42005
Past Event
Improving the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics
Despite the continuing “math wars” debates, there is an emerging consensus on the need for U.S. math teachers to improve both their content and pedagogical knowledge. Key researchers (who were selected using an informal peer review process) have been asked to provide an overview on recent research about what mathematics teachers ned to know and be able to do to improve the performance of all students.
Apr122005
Past Event
Reading Disabilities, Reading Difficulties & School-Based Interventions that Work
The importance of early reading success to later educational achievement has now become common wisdom. Federal agencies, state governments, and individual schools and districts across the country have initiated programs to improve beginning reading instruction, including strategies to identify struggling readers as early as possible. But what comes next?
Apr12005
Past Event
Unionism and Democracy: The Experience, the Legacy, The Future
The Institute received a grant from the ILGWU Heritage Fund in April 2005 to help sponsor this three-day seminar aimed at educating new AFT leaders on the rationale and history behind labor’s support for democracy and worker rights in the world.
Oct72004
Past Event
Early Childhood Assessments: Problems & Possibilities
With increased support for and public investment in early childhood education programs, federal, state, and local authorities have begun to grapple with the need to assess student outcomes, for diagnostic, accountability and program improvement purposes. At the same time, critics continue to raise questions about the appropriateness, validity, and utility of assessments with very young children: How accurate is the data that’s being gathered through various methods and for what purposes can it legitimately be used? What can research tell us about how to design assessments for preschool children that are reasonable, reliable, valid, and useful for teachers and policymakers alike?
May52003
Past Event
Seminar on Education to Build Democracy
On May 6, 2003, the institute hosted a forum on international civic education. An invited group of academics, program developers, and leaders from the AFT, the U.S. State Dept., USAID, the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, the AFL-CIO, and private industry attended the Washington, DC, meeting, to discuss effective program design, content, and strategy for civic education and democracy promotion abroad. The meeting provided those who are involved – funders, researchers, and practitioners – with a chance to share their knowledge and experience. According to participants, the seminar was unprecedented in its promotion of open nteraction among the many diverse elements of the civic education community.
Jan112003
Past Event
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin On January 8, 2003, the Institute jointly hosted the Washington premiere of “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin” at the National Press Club, with the AFL-CIO, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Freedom House, the Rustin Fund, the International Rescue Committee, Social Democrats, U.S.A., the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, AFT President Sandra Feldman, and U.S. Representatives John Lewis and Eleanor Holmes Norton.
Jan32003
Past Event
Unions and Workforce Development (a discussion with John Monks)
A 2003 luncheon discussion on the revitalization of the labor movement featured John Monks, general secretary of Britain's Trades Union Congress (TUC).
Oct282002
Past Event
Strategies to improve student behavior and support student achievement
What can research tell us about early assessment and prevention practices that improve student behavior and student academic performance? What does research tell us about effective practices in classrooms and schools?
May152002
Past Event
'Shanker Lecture' Given By Hong Kong Democracy Leader
The late Szeto Wah, founder of Hong Kong's teachers' union, was the featured speaker at the Institute's Albert Shanker Lecture on May 15, 2002.
May122002
Past Event
Early Language & Literacy Development
Part of the Research to What Works luncheon seies, this discussion highlighted what is known about the language and literacy development of young, preschool-age children and how does this relate to their long-term success in school.
Mar12002
Past Event
Bridging the Gap Between State Standards and Classroom Achievement: A Forum
Unless states step in to help turn standards into the tools that schools need, the promise of standards-based reform will be lost.
May122001
Past Event
Seminar on Workforce Development
Research has shown that most corporations would be better off if they stopped raiding one another for superstar staff and concentrated on identifying and developing the talents of their current workforce.
Feb212001
Past Event
Education and Care for Children in their Preschool Years
This conference, involving participants with a wide range of viewpoints, was designed to elicit discussion about what the academic core of high-quality preschool programs should entail and how it should be delivered.
Sep232023
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.