Dear Faculty, Students, and Staff:
You’re invited to attend a discussion featuring
Dr. David L. Kirp
James D. Marver Professor of Public Policy
UC Berkeley
Education’s Secret Sauce—The Ties That Bind
Moderated by Dr. William G. Tierney
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
12:00pm*
Social Sciences Building (SOS) B-49
*The seminar will start promptly at 12:00pm.
Please find Dr. Kirp’s abstract and bio below.
On behalf of Rossier’s Office of the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs, we hope many of you will come out and support our featured speaker.
Bring your lunch and we’ll provide refreshments.
Thank you.
ABSTRACT
Today’s self-styled education reformers believe that public education is fundamentally broken and that business can supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the market, believing that a healthy dose of competition will do the trick, while others have embraced the notion that the schools are prime candidates for what the business world calls disruptive innovation, with online learning the disruptive force. Common to both mindsets is a belief that the solution resides in the impersonal, whether it’s the invisible hand of the market or the transformative power of technology.
Neither strategy has lived up to its hype, and with good reason—the notion that education can be improved by doing an end run around inherently complicated and messy human relationships is flat-out wrong. All youngsters, especially those from poor and minority backgrounds, need a champion, someone who believes in them. The most effective approaches, whether providing high-quality preschool or keeping high school students on track to graduate, depend on fostering bonds of caring between teachers and their students.
Bio
David L. Kirp has written seventeen books and scores of articles in both the popular press and scholarly journals. He has tackled some of America’s biggest social problems, including affordable housing, access to health, gender discrimination and AIDS.
His latest book, Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for American Education, has been hailed by reviewers and widely cited by education policy-makers. The book chronicles how Union City, New Jersey, a poor urban school district, has transported Latino immigrant children, many of them undocumented, into the education mainstream: more than 90 percent of those youngsters are graduating from high school and 75 percent are going to college. It takes the reader from a third grade classroom to the superintendent’s office, where the crucial if undramatic system-building gets done, from the schoolhouse to the potent politics of the community. This isn’t just an inspiring story—its lessons can be applied nationwide.
