Events

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?” 

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.

The Albert Shanker Institute, in partnership with the AFT, organized an eight-person union leadership study trip to the Middle East in May 2007.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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).

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.

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?

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.