Marian Wright Edelman speaks from her new book, The Sea Is So Wide and My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation, which she wrote as a call to action for all Americans to address the urgent needs of our country's youth.
Dr. Pianta is Dean of the Curry School of Education, as well as the Novartis Professor of Education and Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, University of Virginia. A former special education teacher, Dr. Pianta's research focuses on investigating the effects of schooling on children's social and academic outcomes and on improving school and classroom experiences through teachers' professional development. He has been involved in developing observational assessments of classrooms and observationally-based systems for professional development. Dr.
David Marash has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast journalism. Most recently, he anchored news from Washington for the global news channel, Al Jazeera English and he served for 16 years as the chief international correspondent for ABC News Nightline. In the ever-expanding world of global communication, there are lots of 'new media' like internet and mobile phone links for the transmission of text, voice and pictures, and literally a world of new players guiding the still dominant 'mainstream media,' but for all that, content still matters.
Abstract: Teacher Preparation and Student Achievement: This research project describes the recent changes in the routes into teaching in New York City. It assesses the effects of these changes on the distribution of teachers across schools and the academic achievement of students. It then looks more closely at the preparation of teachers in the district and estimates the effects of characteristics of this preparation on teachers' value-added to student achievement in their first two years of teaching.
Abstract: The challenges facing K-12 public education systems in Michigan and throughout the U.S. are formidable, and seem to grow more complex by the day. Issues related to globalization, federal oversight through the No Child Left Behind law, unfunded state mandates, aging infrastructure, and many more, are putting pressure on K-12 public school systems even while calls to improve student achievement and public education accountability grow from all quarters.
Abstract: Community colleges today enroll over one-half of all college students nationwide or nearly 12 million students. And yet, fewer than 40% of those who start at a public two-year college earn any type of degree within six years. Even among those students who intend to complete a degree, only about one-third do so within six years.
Abstract: Accountability programs, including the one implemented by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, operate under the assumption that schools are inefficient -- that is, that schools can provide higher quality education without investing additional resources. These programs seek to make schools more efficient by using incentives. The state of North Carolina currently operates two independent incentive systems for public schools.
Ambassador James F. Collins, Senior Associate and Director, Russian and Eurasian Program; Diplomat in Residence at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ambassador Collins is an expert on Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Before joining the Carnegie Endowment in 2007, he served as Senior Advisor at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P., a public law firm and policy practice group. James Collins was the U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 1997 to 2001.
Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. The war in Iraq and the fight against Al-Qaeda have posed major challenges to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation for the global movement for human rights. Increasingly, to many critics the war on terror has become a war on human rights, providing cover and sanction for repressive governments around the world, undermining human rights globally and compromising US national security.
Shobita Parthasarathy is Assistant Professor and Codirector of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Professor Parthasarathy will be speaking from her forthcoming book, to be published by MIT press in April, 2007.
Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Lecture Series
Catherine Bertini's career spans public service at international, national, state, and local levels and includes private sector leadership and university teaching.
Danny Leipziger is the Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) and Head of the PREM Network of more than 700 economists and other professionals working on economic policy, lending, and analytic work for the World Bank's client countries. In this capacity he provides strategic leadership and direction to Regional PREM units as well as groups working on economic policy formulation in the area of growth and poverty, debt, trade, gender, and public sector management and governance.
Kemal Dervis, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme. 2006 Citigroup Lecture. Co-sponsored with the International Policy Center and the Turkish Studies Colloquium. Kemal Dervis will give the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy's Citigroup Lecture on October 25, 2006. Kemal Dervis was Turkey's Minister for Economic Affairs and the Treasury and is now the head of the United Nations Development Programme, the UN's global development network.
It is clear that Michigan is in the midst of serious structural economic trouble, perhaps the worst since the Great Depression. Northwest Airlines and Delphi Corp. are already in Chapter 11. There are rumors and real concern about the stability of General Motors, Ford and much of the auto parts industry. There is a real possibility of descent into receivership for both the City of Detroit and the Detroit school system.
Ronna Cook, Associate Director of the Human Services Research Group, Westat, Inc. and Maris Vinovskis, A. M. and H. P. Bentley Professor of History and Professor of Public Policy, University of Michigan, moderated by Edward Gramlich, Interim Provost, University of Michigan; Richard A. Musgrave Professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. The program is sponsored by National Poverty Center and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Bruce Katz is one of the most prominent commentators on cities and urban policy in America. A former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he heads The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program and its varied research agenda on the challenges facing America's metropolitan regions. Katz has been in the trenches of urban policy making in the executive and legislative branches of government, and his informed commentaries are frequently featured on op-ed pages across the country.
Senator Carl Levin, (D-Mich.) will discuss 'New Directions in National Security' at the 2005-06 Josh Rosenthal Education Fund Lecture. Sen. Levin, who has represented Michigan since 1979, is the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee, and the Select Intelligence Committee. The lecture commemorates the life and work of Josh Rosenthal, a 1979 University of Michigan graduate who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
On November 12, 2004, alumni, friends and donors attended the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new home of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, Joan and Sanford Weill Hall (see photo). Construction of the $34 million building is now officially underway – and the promise of a magnificent academic facility is literally coming to life. Over 450 guests attended the groundbreaking, including Ford school alumni from as far back as the Class of 1953, current students, President and Mrs.
Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Lecture Series
Dr. Namanga Ngongi served as the UN Secretary General’s Chief of Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo and the chief negotiator for the ceasefire that ended hostilities there in July 2003.
Robin Wright, a five-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, is a global affairs correspondent for The Los Angeles Times. She has had extended tours of duty outside the United States, reporting from more than 130 countries. Ms. Wright has spent more than five years in the Middle East, two years in Europe, and seven years in Africa, as well as stints in Latin America and Asia.
Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Lecture Series
Catherine Bertini, formerly executive director of the World Food Program, gave this inaugural lecture of the Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence.
In complement to the University Musical Society's performance of "Every Brilliant Thing," the Ford School will host a panel of university and local mental health policy experts moderated by Paula Lantz, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Professor of Public Policy.
A Livingston Award-winning journalist, a MacArthur Genius and anthropologist, and a U-M public policy expert will share the stories and findings behind immigration statistics and discuss the complexities, ramifications and human lives that are involved in clandestine migration.
Vivian Thomson will offer an insider’s account of how power is wielded in environmental policy making at the state level. Drawing on her experience as a former member of Virginia’s State Air Pollution Control Board, she narrates cases in Alexandria, Wise, and Roda that involved coal and air pollution. She identifies a “climate of capitulation” —a deeply rooted favoritism toward coal and electric utilities in state air pollution policies. Thomson links Virginia’s climate of capitulation with campaign finance patterns, a state legislature that depends on outsiders for information and bill drafting, and a political culture that tends toward inertia. She extends her analysis to fifteen other coal states and recommends reforms aimed at mitigating ingrained biases toward coal and electric utility interests.
