Past Season: K-12 Education

A Blueprint for Action • Racial Disparities • Immigration • K-12 Education • Speaker Archive

All Kids Learn

(2003-2004)

Select an event below to learn more:

Creating Schools that Work: A Community Conversation
Strategies for Closing the Racial Gap in Academic Achievement
Invest Now or Lose Later: Improving Education for Economic Growth

Minnesota Meeting town hall meeting 2003

Creating Schools that Work:
A Community Conversation

Town hall style meeting with panel
December 2003

Read the summary (article in the Foundation's Catalyst newsletter)

A town hall format and interactive polling gauged participant views on the achievement gap, the new academic standards, workforce preparation, and other key issues. Ideas generated at this forum helped shape the discussion at subsequent Minnesota Meetings.

Panelists included: Duane Benson, former state senator and former executive director, Minnesota Business Partnership; Jennifer Godinez, executive director, La Escuelita; Ossie Brooks James, principal, Lyndale Community School (Minneapolis); Denise Johnson, editorial writer, Star Tribune; Louis King, president and CEO, Summit Academy OIC; Cheri Pierson Yecke, Minnesota Department of Education Commissioner. Journalists Cathy Wurzer and Ken Stone moderated the discussion.

Strategies for Closing the Racial Gap in Academic Achievement

with speaker Dr. William Ouchi
February 2004

Read the summary

William Ouchi, Ph.D., discussed successful – and not so successful – efforts across the country to close the academic achievement gap between children of color and white children. A business professor at UCLA, Dr. Ouchi has studied the organization and management of dozens of American schools. His recent study Making Schools Work: A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education They Need applies business management principles (e.g., decentralization and accountability) to school reform..

Invest Now or Lose Later:
Improving Education for Economic Growth

with speaker Robert Reich

May 2004

Read the summary

Robert Reich, former United States Secretary of Labor and perhaps the country’s leading thinker on workforce issues, spoke to a crowd of more than 500 at the final ALL KIDS LEARN event.

Panelists included: Wilson Bradshaw, President, Metropolitan State University; Arthur Rolnick, Senior Vice President and Director of Research, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; Michael V. Ciresi, Chairman of the Executive Board, Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi, LLP (moderator).

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