Education Access Event to Feature Daughter of Lead Plaintiff in Brown vs Board of Ed
As Massachusetts debates raising the charter school cap, school district reforms, and how to close achievement gaps, Pioneer Institute will host “Equal Access to Excellence: Charter and District School Reform,” at which a diverse group of nationally recognized education reform experts will discuss how to make equal access to quality education a reality for all children.
The event, to be held Monday, September 19th from 8:00-10:10 a.m. at the Omni Parker House hotel in Boston, will feature a keynote address by Cheryl Brown Henderson, whose father, the late Rev. Oliver L. Brown, was lead plaintiff in Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that banned segregation in public education.
Update: Watch the policy presentation and round table discussion portions of the event here:
Cheryl is founding president of the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence, and Research, and the owner of Brown & Associates, an educational consulting firm. She will take questions from the audience after her address.
The keynote will be followed by a policy presentation on the academic quality of Boston and Massachusetts charter public schools by National Alliance for Charter Public Schools President Nina Rees and Dr. James Woodworth, quantitative research analyst at Stanford University’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes.
After the presentation there will be a panel discussion featuring Chelsea Superintendent of Schools Dr. Mary Bourque, Pioneer Institute Senior Fellow in Education Dr. Cara Candal, Barnstable Superintendent of Schools Meg Mayo-Brown, and Dr. Sephira Shuttlesworth, regional support director for SABIS® Educational Systems. Dr. Shuttlesworth is the widow of the Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights leader, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
The panel will be moderated by Joanna Weiss, commentator with WGBH and WBZ. The event will conclude with a question and answer period.
“Equal Access to Excellence: Charter and District School Reform” is co-sponsored by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Center for Education Reform, the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, SABIS®, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Families for Excellent Schools and the Black Alliance for Educational Options.
Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.
