School Change Summit: Live Blog

by Paul Bass, New Haven Independent,

You can add your voice in person at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School or here online as School Change 2.0 meets New Media 2.0 Tuesday night at a one-of-a-kind summit.

The topic is school reform—where it’s headed nationally, where New Haven is taking it, where it needs to go.

Diane Ravitch, author of this year’s hottest school-change polemic, is coming to town for the event. Twelve people at the front lines of our local school reform experiment—teachers, principals, administrators, students, parents—have read her book, called “The Death And Life Of The Great American School System.” They will join Ravitch onstage at Co-op High School’s auditorium for a discussion. WTNH anchor Chris Velardi will moderate the discussion.

The event gets underway at 6:50 p.m.

Meanwhile, six journalists and elected officials immersed in the school-change debate will join them onstage. They will hold their own blow-by-blow real-time discussion of what happens onstage. Their discussion will take place here in an online chat.

You can watch the panel in person at Co-op. Admission is free. (Enter at the school’s “theater entrance” at Crown and College streets.) After the one-hour panel discussion, audience members will have the opportunity to ask Diane Ravitch questions.

You can also watch the discussion at home (or anywhere with internet access) on your computer. The panel discussion will be live-streamed here on the Independent website as well as on the WTNH and WNPR websites. You can jump right in and add your thoughts and observations to that conversation online.

Click here for a previous story on how Ravitch’s book and New Haven’s nationally watched school reform drive fit into the next “2.0” stage of the country’s education debate.)

The Independent organized this event with co-sponsors WTNH and WNPR. The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven provided financial support. R.J. Julia Booksellers’ Just The Right Book provided copies of the book to panelists.

Here’s who’s scheduled to serve on the panel discussion with Ravitch:

Reggie Mayo, New Haven superintendent of schools
Tom Burns, New Haven teachers union
Nilda Aponte, parent, Teach Our Children
Alex Johnston, ConnCAN, New Haven Board of Education
Michael Thomas, Achievement First
Karen Lott, principal, Katherine Brennan School
Rachel Sexton, teacher, Domus Academy
Henry Fernandez, parent, education consultant
Gary Highsmith, principal, Hamden High School; graduate, New Haven Public Schools
Henry Murphy, student, Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School
Solomon Botwick-Reis, student, Wilbur Cross High School
Damaris Rau, curriculum director, New Haven Public Schools

Here’s who’s scheduled to serve on the live-blogging panel:

Melissa Bailey, New Haven Independent
John DeStefano, mayor, New Haven
John Dankosky, WNPR
Gary Holder-Winfield, state representative, New Haven
Angela Carter, New Haven Register
Rick Green, Hartford Courant