Education historian Diane Ravitch to speak

Diane Ravitch, regarded by many as the nation’s leading education historian today, will offer an informed analysis of the current state of American education — what’s broken and how can it be fixed — at a free, public presentation sponsored by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education, and the Wisconsin Center on Education Research, with support from the Wisconsin Education Association Council and the UW-Madison Lectures Committee.

Ravitch’s presentation, “The Future of Public Education,” will be held Tuesday, March 8, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Wisconsin Union Theater, Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St., Madison. A 30-minute question-and-answer period will follow the presentation. Students, parents of students, and education professionals are encouraged to attend.

For those who interested in Ravitch’s presentation but unable to attend, the event partners will provide live, streamed video. To view the presentation online, go to the Wisconsin Academy website just prior to the start of the program. Please note that this program will not be available for subsequent video viewing.

Ravitch is a research professor of education at New York University, senior fellow at Brookings Institution, and renowned education historian. Her 2010 book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” takes issue with both the political right and left, and has been called a “must read” for education policymakers at all levels of government.

This program kicks off “Education is Fundamental,” a three-part Academy Evenings series during March, in which leading historians, researchers, and administrators discuss the most important challenges facing education in Wisconsin and offer their ideas for repair. All programs are free and open to the public.

• On March 22, School of Education Dean Julie Underwood will moderate a panel discussion on “Wisconsin’s Education Challenges” with Madison Schools Superintendent Daniel Nerad, former Milwaukee Schools Superintendent Howard Fuller, and Michael Thompson of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
• On March 29, Adam Gamoran, UW–Madison professor of sociology and educational policy studies and director of the Wisconsin Center on Education Research, will discuss “Educational Inequality in the Aftermath of No Child Left Behind.”

For more information on the series, visit wisconsinacademy.org/evenings.

Also, for the School of Education, Ravitch’s presentation kicks off the Department of Educational Policy Studies Annual Conference, this year focusing on “The Obama Education Agenda: Principles, Policies and Prospects.”

The daylong conference-on Wednesday, March 9, in the Education Building, 1000 Bascom Mall — will feature panel discussions with scholars and a lunch keynote by former U.S. Representative David Obey, who represented Wisconsin’s Seventh Congressional District from 1969 to 2011. The conference is free and open to the public.