On September 12, the Forum co-hosted a Capitol Hill briefing with the Alliance for Excellent Education, featuring Conveners Linda Darling-Hammond, Pedro Noguera, and Forum Executive Director George Wood, as well as Congressman Rubén Hinojosa. Their topic, “Student Engagement as a Dropout Prevention Strategy,” attracted a standing-room-only crowd of more than 100 educators, policy advocates and policymakers. Dr. Noguera began the discussion (click here to link to the video) with the notion that the dropout rate “is really a symptom of a problem and not a problem that can be solved by itself.”
Dr. Noguera also said schools must be flexible enough to forge alternative pathways to graduation for the 32% of dropouts who leave school because their families need them to work. Moreover, he noted that schools should not be penalized for helping such students simply because they didn’t conform to the standard four-year graduation rate. “We should not penalize schools for sticking with kids and providing support for a longer period of time,” he said. “Poverty intersects with this issue. It is foolhardy to focus narrowly on academic achievement.”
Read full report here.
The next briefing on Assessments for Learning: a Briefing on Performance-Based Assessments will be held on Monday, October 20, 2008 from 10:00 am to Noon on Capitol Hill in ashington, DC 2261 Rayburn House Office Building. Speakers include:
Linda Darling-Hammond, Forum Convener and Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University; Eva Baker, Director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA; Ann Cook, Co-Director of the NY Performance Standards Consortium and Co-Director of Urban Academy in NYC; Cass Carland, a recent high school graduate; and Nick Donohue, former Commissioner of Education for New Hampshire and currently President and CEO of the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
To attend, email the Forum at RSVP@forumforeducation.org. Space is limited. Seats will be alloted in order of receipt of RSVPs.
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