CES Fall Forum 2016

This workshop will revisit the call for public school transformation that followed the release of A Nation at Risk in the 1980s and included Albert Shanker and Ted Sizer's radical notion that public school 'teacher leaders' should be allowed to create innovative learning spaces from which authentic, transformational practices could be exported to the larger system of public schools. We will follow the movement to create these catalytic learning environments over the last thirty years and the attempt by some to hijack that movement in order to supplant public school systems with their own charter systems. We will end by perusing the current educational landscape to identify examples of innovative learning environments designed with the intention of transforming the larger system of public schools.