Closing Achievement Gaps

This intergenerational panel discussion at NewSchools Summit 2010 conference highlights how the civil rights and education reform movements are similar. Experts explore how we may draw on lessons from the civil rights movement for tackling what many consider today’s most important social justice issue: closing the achievement gaps that persist in public education. Entrepreneurs will be inspired to redouble their actions in addressing the inequities in education that remain unresolved and to take aggressive action to push the movement toward accomplishing even more ambitious goals. The NewSchools Summit 2010 is an event convened by the NewSchools Venture Fund.

Byron Auguste is the director of McKinsey’s Social Sector Office. Based in Washington, D.C., since 2007, Auguste spent 14 years in McKinsey’s Los Angeles office, where he was elected principal in 1999 and director in 2005. His work focused on helping technology and services companies to achieve faster growth, greater productivity, and higher profitability, and on designing and building information and services businesses. He founded and led globally McKinsey’s High Tech Services Sector, served on the firm’s global committees that elect and evaluate new partners, and leads its diversity initiative globally. He is a co-founder and board chairman of Hope Street Group, a nationwide, nonpartisan, volunteer organization of professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs that develops and promotes Opportunity Economics public policies for the U.S.

Mike Feinberg currently serves as superintendent of KIPP Houston. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, he joined Teach For America and became a fifth grade bilingual teacher in Houston ISD. In 1994, Feinberg co-founded the Knowledge Is Power Program along with fellow TFA corps member Dave Levin; in 1995 he founded KIPP Academy in Houston. In 1994, along with Dave Levin, he was awarded the Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Excellence in Education and the National Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen in 2006.

Howard Fuller is a distinguished professor of education, and founder/director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Immediately before his appointment at Marquette University, Fuller served as the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools.

Kati Haycock is president of The Education Trust. One of the nation’s leading child advocates in education, she previously served as executive vice president of the Children’s Defense Fund, the nation’s largest child-advocacy organization. Haycock founded and served as president of the Achievement Council, a statewide organization that helps teachers and principals in predominantly minority schools improve student achievement. Before that, she served as director of the outreach and student affirmative-action programs for the nine-campus University of California System.

Rebecca Nieves Huffman serves as vice president at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), where she manages the grant making work of the organization through its Fund for Authorizing Excellence. Before joining NACSA, Huffman served for five years as president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options (Hispanic CREO), an organization that is the national voice for the right of Latino parents to access all educational options and is an agent of change and equity in education. Prior to that, she was the associate director of recruitment and selection for the KIPP Foundation.

Remington Wiley is a student at Spelman College. As an international studies major and Spanish minor, Remington has traveled to 13 countries. With a growing passion for education reform, post-graduation Remington will return home to teach at KIPP Academy as a 2010 corps member for Teach for America.

https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/closing_achievement_gaps