In April, approximately 40,000 workers struck the footwear manufacturing facilities operated by Yue Yuen Industrial, a global supplier of shoes for brands such as Adidas and Nike. Although the sheer size of this walkout drew worldwide attention, in fact, Chinese workers overall are increasingly themselves organizing and taking action to improve their wages and working conditions. In 2014, workers employed at the China operations of IBM, Pepsi, and Wal-Mart – to name just the more prominent brands – walked off their jobs. There are strikes and protests each day as workers, inspired in part by the social media reports of other job actions, assert themselves.

What does this activity mean, for Chinese workers generally, for the role and future of the official, Communist Party led All China Federation of Trade Unions, and the broader society? Join us on June 18 and find out.

Featured Speaker:

HAN DANGFANG

Han Dongfang is Founder and Executive Director of China Labour Bulletin (CLB), a Hong Kong-based labor rights group. CLB sponsors and supports a diverse range of activities aimed at improving the lives of Chinese workers and fostering the development of independent labor organizations. Han also serves as a correspondent for Radio Free Asia, where he presents thrice-weekly radio program from Hong Kong, focusing on workers’ struggles in mainland China. He has written numerous books and articles. Over the past 15 years, Han has been an advocate for workers’ rights and trade unionism in China and a frequent speaker at international labor movement, NGO, and government-sponsored conferences around the world. In May 1989 he was co-founder and spokesperson of the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation, China’s first independent labor organization since 1949. He headed the Chinese government’s “most wanted” list of worker activists, issued after the June 4 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, and was imprisoned without trial for 22 months. He was released in April 1991, suffering from tuberculosis contracted in prison. In September 1992 he received a year of medical treatment in the U.S., with support of the AFL-CIO and Human Rights Watch and had most of one lung removed. In August 1993 he returned to China to continue independent labor movement work and was detained in Guangzhou by the police and expelled to Hong Kong, where he continues to reside today. He has received numerous awards, including the AFL-CIO George Meany Human Rights Award and the Democracy Award from the National Endowment for Democracy. Han sits on the board of Human Rights in China and the Albert Shanker Institute.

Respondents:

SHARON HOM, Executive Director, Human Rights in China

HAROLD MEYERSON, Editor-at-Large, The American Prospect; Columnist, Washington Post; Shanker Institute Board Member

The United States accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners; it is no exaggeration to call our national approach to criminal justice “mass incarceration.” And our prison cells are disproportionately filled with poor men of color, especially African-American men. Mass incarceration is one of the paramount civil rights and economic justice issues of our day. Zero-tolerance discipline policies in American schools have often led to the criminalization of student misbehavior and the creation of what many call the “school-to-prison pipeline.” What are the alternatives to zero-tolerance discipline policies? How do we ensure that our schools become vehicles for escaping poverty and constructing meaningful, productive lives as democratic citizens, and not the starting point of an institutional arrangement that ends in mass incarceration?

Panelists:

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, Fifth District, Minnesota; Co-Chair, House Progressive Caucus; Member, Congressional Black Caucus/

James Forman, Jr.,Professor, Yale Law School; Founder, Educational Opportunity and Juvenile Justice Clinic, Yale Law School; Co-Founder, Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools

Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers and The Albert Shanker Institute

Moderator: Burnie Bond, Director of Programs, The Albert Shanker Institute

Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the AFT and the Albert Shanker Institute. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other.

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.” But, as the NAEYC’s statement on the CCSS also observed, that “threat also provides an opportunity” for early education to exert more positive, “upward pressure” on the K–12 system.

Could the recent attention to the “30 Million Word Gap,” by Hillary Clinton, The New York Times, the Bloomberg Foundation, and others, including the Shanker Institute, represent one such opportunity? Could a focus on oral language development and a systematic, developmentally-appropriate approach to building background knowledge in the early years be the key to moving the nation closer to the goals of the Common Core?

 

 

Panelists

Susan Neuman, Professor of Early Childhood & Literacy Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development; former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Elementary & Secondary Education, US DoE. Slides

Joan Almon, Founding Director, U.S. Alliance for Childhood. Slides

Barbara Bowman, Cofounder and Interim President of External Affairs, Erikson Institute; former Chief Early Childhood Education Officer for Chicago Public Schools. Slides

Helen Blank, Director of Childcare and Early Learning, National Women’s Law Center. (Moderator)

 

 

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Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the AFT and the Albert Shanker Institute. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other.

The conversation focused on federal and state policy on student assessment, with an eye to identifying policies that would promote best assessment practices. More specifically, the panel discussed questions such as:
  • Is the current assessment regime, with its strong focus on standardized exams, providing useful and actionable information on student, teacher and school performance? Useful diagnostic information on individual student needs?
  • What role should other assessments, such as performance assessments, play in American education?
  • What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of standardized exams and of performance assessments?
  • What would the ideal assessment regime look like?

Panelists

Ann Cook, Executive Director, New York Performance Standards Consortium; co-Founder, Urban Academy Laboratory High School

Steven Glazerman, Senior Fellow, Mathematica
SLIDES

Stuart Kahl, co-founder, Measured Progress.

Moderator: Clifford Janey, Senior Research Scholar, Boston University School of Education; Albert Shanker Institute Board Member

Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the AFT and the Albert Shanker Institute. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other.  

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. The panel discussed questions such as: How well has the Common Core addressed this civic purpose? Will the intellectual challenges of the English language arts and mathematics standards fully groom students for the deliberative work of citizenship? Why were the civics standards of the Common Core the last to be published, and why did the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers make these standards an optional part of Common Core implementation? What must be done to complete the work of bringing the civic purposes of education into 21st-century American education?

Panelists

Leo Casey, Executive Director, Albert Shanker Institute

Chester E. Finn, Jr., Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Meira Levinson, Associate Professor, Havard Graduate School of Education

Ross Weiner, Vice President, Aspen Institute; Executive Director, Education and Society Program

Moderator: Marla Ucelli-Kashyap, Assistant to the President for Educational Issues, American Federation of Teachers

Complete bios

Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the AFT and the Albert Shanker Institute. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other.

The use of value-added and other test-based measures of performance in teacher evaluations is among the most controversial issues in education policy today. Supporters argue that new teacher evaluations are only meaningful if they include value-added as a predominant component, while opponents contend that these estimates are not ready for use in any high-stakes decisions.

This highly contentious debate has thus far focused mostly on whether to employ these estimates, but there has been comparatively little attention paid to how to use them in an appropriate, productive manner. And it is these “nuts and bolts” details of policies that often determine their success or failure. With roughly 30 states moving ahead with new evaluations, it is past time to get specific.

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.

Panelists

Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University; Co-Director, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education

slides

Douglas Harris, Associate Professor of Economics and Endowed Chair in Public Education at Tulane University; Director, New Orleans Education Research Alliance (NOERA).

slides

Thomas Kane, Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Faculty Director, Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research

slides

Moderator: Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers and Albert Shanker Institute

Complete bios

Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the AFT and the Albert Shanker Institute. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other.

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