In March 2009, we started video-taping our presentations. If you were unable to attend the Hot Lunch and would like to see what you missed, please find the links to each video at the end of each month's presenation description!

May 15 , 2009
"Learning Without Boundaries"
Presented by Julie Young, President and Chief Executive Officer, Florida Virtual School

Florida Virtual School was literally founded as a result of asking the question "What If?" The answers to several of their questions are what led them to develop a program designed to work around the needs of a student versus the expendencies of a bureaucracy. FLVS has grown into the nations largest virtual school, setting standards for both virtual and traditional education programs for years to come.

FLVS began in 1997 as an experimental grant-funded project and is now a state funded program with over 134, 000 successful completions for their 2008-2009 school year. In addition to their state program, FLVS has a global school serving students in about 45 states and 30 countries, with over 95 course offerings.

Under Julie Young’s leadership, FLVS has been recognized for its work by the National School Boards Association and the Canadian Association for Distance Education. Florida Virtual School has received the 2008 Better Government Competition Award from the Pioneer Institute, the EdNET 2007 Pioneer of the Year Award, the 2007 USDLA 21st Century award for Best Practice in Distance Learning, and the 2006 EdNET Impact award. In 2003, her school was named as one of the WebSmart Top 50 organizations by Business Week Magazine.

To watch the video, click here. To hear the audio-only podcast, click here.
For additional information, click here.

April 17 , 2009
"The New Agenda: From Theory of Action to Policy to Practice"
Presented by Peter McWalters, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education

Commissioner McWalters will discuss the attempts made in Rhode Island to get all edcuation systems moving in the same direction on behalf of improving student performance and attainment.

Peter McWalters has served as the Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education since 1992. Commissioner McWalters has supported high standards for students and for all educators.

Under his watch, the Education Department has developed tests that measure what students know and what they can do. He has called for statewide early-childhood education, good training for teachers, clear statewide learning expectations, a school-financing system that is fair to all districts, strong support for urban education and for the education of student with disabilities, and a robust system of public reporting about school and student performance.

Commissioner McWalters has been a major advocate for high-school reform and for proficiency-based graduation requirements such as senior projects and electronic portfolios. He has worked to ensure that every high-school student is known well by at least one staff member in the building.

A lifelong urban educator, Commissioner McWalters began his career as a teacher of English as a Second Language in the Rochester, New York, public schools. He holds a degree in history and philosophy from Boston College, and he served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. Currently in the final year of his service as Commissioner, he is the 4th-longest-serving chief state school officer in the country.

For additional information, click here.
Click here to see Peter McWalters's video-taped presentation.

March 20, 2009
"What Everyone Needs To Know About College Readiness"
Presented by David Conley, Professor of Education Policy and Leadership, College of Education, University of Oregon

The current US secondary system of education is designed to yield a certain proportion of students who are eligible to apply to college. These students, once admitted, may or may not be ready for the challenges and expectations they encounter once they arrive in a postsecondary classroom.
Building Excellent Schools executive director and Fellowship Director put a fine-tooth comb through the thicket of our united challenge.

President Obama recently challenged all Americans to complete at least one year of college. As currently constituted, the US educational system would have great difficulty enabling all Americans to achieve this goal. What does it mean to be college ready, not just college eligible? What will it take to enable all Americans to be able to attend at least one year of postsecondary education successfully?

What must educators and policymakers do to bring about the necessary changes so that many more students are able to pursue educational opportunities beyond high school? Dr. David T. Conley is Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership in the College of Education, University of Oregon. He is the founder and director of the Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR), and founder and chief executive officer of the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC), a 501(c)3 non-profit educational research organization.

Dr. Conley is the author of College Knowledge: What It Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready (2005), in addition to numerous articles, reports, papers, and book chapters. His next publication, available fall 2009, is entitled College Ready.

Click here for a copy of Dr. Conley's power point presentation.  
Click here to see Dr. Conley's video-taped presentation.

February 20, 2009
"Needles In Haystacks: Star Search -- are there more stars in the galaxy?"
Presented by Linda Brown, Executive Director, Building Excellent Schools and Sue Walsh, Director of BES Fellowship

Where is the next generation of leadership coming from and how can we agressively develop a pool of outstanding school directors, principals, executive directors and instructional leaders?

Building Excellent Schools executive director and Fellowship Director put a fine-tooth comb through the thicket of our united challenge.

What makes a great leader? Where do great leaders come from? How to identify and develop practice-based leaders.

Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers.

Linda Brown is the Founder and Executive Director of Building Excellent Schools. A leading figure in the national charter school movement, Linda has worked with charter schools and education reform for more than 14 years. She founded and directed the Massachusetts Charter School Resource Center – the archetypal charter school resource center in the United States – where she played an important part in the founding of every exemplary charter school in Massachusetts and spearheaded the identification and dissemination of charter school best practices throughout the country. In order to further drive the development of strong urban schools, Linda conceived of and founded Building Excellent Schools and the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship. As Executive Director, Linda sets the strategic direction and broader vision of the organization and guides it in its mission of making deep and lasting impact in urban education.

The Director of the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship is Susan Walsh. Sue is an experienced urban charter school leader who has invested 10 years in Massachusetts charter schools as a teacher, a master teacher, a curriculum coordinator and a principal. She is dedicated to the core beliefs of rigorous performance-based academic achievement and the urgency of getting schools as good as they must be for students. Sue was a team member at Lowell Middlesex Academy Charter School, which shifted from a successful program for at-risk students to a highly regarded, award-winning charter school readying for its second charter renewal. Before joining BES in 2004, Sue was Principal of the South Boston Harbor Academy Charter School (now Boston Collegiate Charter School) where she provided outstanding instructional leadership for the school’s entire educational program.

The organization’s flagship program, the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship, has been successful in the launch of 7 of the 10 charters issued in Massachusetts over the past two years. The organization, begun in 1993, has been replicated in almost every state that has strong charter school legislation. Linda held the position of Associate Head of School at an independent school prior to her tenure with Building Excellent Schools.

January 23, 2009
"What is Charter School Growth Fund"
Presented by John Lock, CEO and President, Charter School Growth Fund

The mission of the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF) is to make value-added grants and loans for the development and expansion of high quality charter management and support organizations.

Each year, the Charter School Growth Fund invests in a manageable number of new charter school operators and plays an active, hands-on role in accelerating the development of their networks. By collaborating with a network of charter school operators, charter advocacy organizations, financial institutions, school quality monitoring services, grassroots parent action groups and supportive public officials, CSGF’s leadership hopes to realize a vision that includes:

Access to a high quality education for all children;

Increased support for independent school options at the local, state and federal levels;

Increased parent awareness of and demand for high-quality educational options;

A widespread public expectation that students of all demographics are capable of achieving academic success; and

More equitable financial support for charter schools and other effective schooling options.

John Lock, CEO and President of the Charter School Growth Fund, has often been described as a "serial entrepreneur" given his passion for creating new organizations and supporting entrepreneurial leadership. John is a successful operational manager, hands-on private equity investor, and investment banker. He has extensive experience building and managing start-up companies, and he has served as CEO, CFO, COO and board member of numerous organizations. Prior to joining CSGF, he served as the Executive Director and teacher at a charter high school located in Southern California. John is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

November 21, 2008
"Graduation Nation: What Would It Take To Graduate All Our High Schools Students Ready For College and/or Career? "
Presented by Robert Balfanz, Research Scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, John Hopkins University

The talk examinined the challenges we would need to overcome and promising, policies, programs, and strategies to achieve it in Colorado and across the Nation

Robert Balfanz is a research scientist at the Center for Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University. He is the Co-Director of the Talent Development Middle and High School Project, which is currently working with over 100 high poverty secondary schools to develop, implement and evaluate comprehensive whole school reforms. His work focuses on translating research findings into effective reforms for high poverty secondary schools. He has published widely on secondary school reform, high school dropouts, middle grade on-track indicators, and instructional interventions in high poverty middle and high schools.

Recent work includes, Locating the Dropout Crisis, with co-author Nettie Legters in which they identify the number and location of high schools with high dropout rates and What Your Community Can Do to End its Dropout Crisis. He is the Co-Director of the Everyone Graduates Center to be launched in October, 2008 which will engage in analytic, tool and model development, and capacity building efforts aimed at ending the nation’s graduation rate crisis. Dr. Balfanz is also the Co-Operator of the Baltimore Talent Development High School, a Baltimore City Public School System Innovation High School. His recent work on middle and high school reform can be found at www.every1graduates.org

For additional information please check out the following documents:

Grad Nation: A Guidebook to Help Communities Tackle the Dropout Crisis

What Your Community Can Do To End Its Dropout Crisis: Learnings From Research and Practise

October 17, 2008
"Rethinking Teacher Education"
Presented by Dr. David Steiner, Dean of School of Education, Hunter College CUNY

Dean David Steiner will briefly describe his past criticisms of Schools of Education, and describe how Hunter's unique partnership with KIPP, other Charter Schools, Teach for America, and the Department of Education, is designed to overcome some if not most of these problems. He will discuss the aims of the program, its ambitions, and its current progress and challenges. In addition, Dean Steiner will demonstrate technology used as an integral part not just of that program, but of the School of Education as a whole. A question and answer session will conclude the event.

Dr. David Steiner, currently Klara and Larry Silverstein Dean of the School of Education at Hunter College CUNY, came to New York after serving as Director of Arts Education at the National Endowment for the Arts, and prior to that, as Chairman of the Department of Education Policy at Boston University. He works in the fields of K-12 education policy, the philosophy of education, ethics, and political theory. As Dean at Hunter College for the last three years, Dr. Steiner has introduced cutting-edge technology focused on the clinical preparation of teachers, inaugurated a major partnership with top-performing charter schools and Teach for America, and led the school to major increases in external funding, enrollment, and faculty hires.

An award winning teacher and recipient of multiple research awards, Dr. Steiner has published two books on the challenges of public education, together with two edited volumes, multiple papers, book chapters, and reviews. His research on Schools of Education has been the subject of a national discussion and has been followed by numerous studies by other scholars. Dr. Steiner has designed and constructed assessment, accountability and curricula materials, consulted with major education reform organizations, directed major grants, and served on national education task forces focused on the improved delivery of education. Dr. Steiner has addressed numerous public and scholarly forums both in the United States and abroad on topics of education reform, led research teams, and worked with public officials, academics, and public school teachers to implement new programs. To his focus on education reform, Dr. Steiner also brings several years of international banking, and degrees from Balliol College, Oxford University (BA and MA) and Harvard University (Ph.D.).

September 19 , 2008
"Sleeper Reformers: Why Democrats (of all people) will be the ones who bring fundamental change to public education."
Presented by Joe Williams, Executive Director of the NYC-Based Democrats for Education Reform

Joe Williams explains how the planets are aligning in ways that will mean big things for elected Democrats in the education reform world.

Joe Williams, executive director of the NYC-based Democrats for Education Reform, is a former newspaper journalist and author of the controversial book "Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education" Previously, Mr. Williams covered the New York City school system for the New York Daily News. As an education reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he won numerous local, state, and national awards for his coverage of the Milwaukee Public Schools and that city's groundbreaking school choice programs Joe lives in New York City, where both of his children attend city public schools.

Williams has contributed book chapters, articles and reports on numerous education-reform related topics

Education Next, "Who got the raw deal in Gotham," Winter 2005.

Education Sector, "L.A. Story: Can a Parent Revolution Change Urban Education's Power Structure?" July 2006

Education Next, "Games Charter Opponents Play," Winter 2007

Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government, "The Politics of NOT Implementing an Adequacy Judgment: The Case of New York," October 2005

Education Sector, "Echo Chamber: The National Education Association's Campaign Against NCLB," July 2006

Education Sector, "Extreme Makeover: Two Failing San Diego Schools Get New Start As Charters," November 2006

Education Next, "The Legal Cash Machine," Summer 2005

Education Next, "An Education Mayor Takes Charge," Fall 2005

Education Next, "Breaking The Mold: How Do School Entrepreneurs Create Change," Spring 2006

For a link to a video that was taped during Mr. William's visit to Denver, click here.