"Racing to the Top" of Education Reform is Focus of Yale SOM Conference

New Haven, Conn., February 23, 2010 — More than 600 educators and leaders in education reform will gather at the fourth annual Yale School of Management (SOM) Education Leadership Conference on Friday, March 26 at the Omni Hotel in New Haven, Conn.

The theme of this year’s conference, organized by the Yale SOM Education Club, is "Racing to the Top." Taking place against the backdrop of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top Fund competition to advance school reform, this full-day event will explore the ideas and challenges at the forefront of the education reform movement.

Jon Schnur, Co-founder and CEO of New Leaders for New Schools and former Senior Advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, will deliver the morning’s keynote address.

A keynote lunch panel titled "Racing to the Top: Successes and Challenges Facing Reformers Today" will be moderated by Ellen Winn, Director of the Education Equality Project. The panel will feature Wendy Kopp, Founder and CEO of Teach for America, and Roberto Rodriquez, Special Assistant to President Obama for Education on the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Twelve additional panel sessions throughout the day will address topics such as the benefits and challenges of the Race to the Top initiative; methods for improving failing schools; maximizing the use of state-level longitudinal data systems to raise student achievement; constructing an effective teacher evaluation system; teacher retention; funding options for education entrepreneurs; and replicating high-performing school models within districts across the country.

The panelists of the Education Leadership Conference include entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, and the leaders of foundations, universities, for-profit and nonprofit education organizations, state government, and charter schools. Among this year’s participants are representatives from the U.S. Department of Education; American Federation of Teachers; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; The New Teacher Project; Achievement First; KIPP Foundation; NewSchools Venture Fund; the Departments of Education of New York, Rhode Island, and Louisiana; and the public school systems of Hartford, New Haven, and Washington, DC.

The Yale SOM Education Club will award the inaugural Yale-Lynn Hall Teacher Action Research Prize for the best original research documenting the implementation of a classroom or school intervention conducted by a teacher or team of teachers in pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. The goal of the prize is to disseminate research on promising classroom methods, to promote action research as a best practice in teacher professional development and school reform, and to promote the professionalism of teacher-researchers as education policy decision-makers.

For a full agenda, list of panelists, and registration, please visit the conference website: http://community.som.yale.edu/education/index.php.

Members of the press are invited to attend. To request a press pass, please contact Tabitha Wilde, Director of Media Relations, at 203.432.6010 or tabitha.wilde@yale.edu. Space is limited.

The conference is sponsored by Webster Bank, the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN), and the Charter Oak Challenge Foundation.