Twenty years ago, conservative ideas were gaining traction in K–12 education. Charter schools were opening all over the place, vouchers were finally being tried, academic standards were rising, results-based accountability had become the watchword in policy circles, and reformers were taking the idea of “character education” seriously.
But no victory is ever final. In recent decades many of these reforms, given life by conservatives, have been transformed by progressives, reshaped by their obsession with identity politics, or just abandoned. And conservatives have too often stopped talking about why education matters, skipping ahead to structural changes, typically summed up with “more school choice.”
The Education 20/20 speaker series, sponsored by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Hoover Institution, aims to refill the conservative void in the education reform conversation.
Join us each month through June 2019, as we talk with prominent conservative writers, intellectuals, and policymakers to provide compelling answers to the age-old question, “What's the purpose of school?
Follow the conversation on Twitter with @educationgadfly and #ed2020.
Speaker Series Dates:
September 27, 2018 | 4-6pm
Heather Mac Donald
October 11, 2018 | 12-2pm
Kay Hymowitz
Nicholas Eberstadt
November 28, 2018 | 12-2pm
Naomi Schaefer Riley
Jonah Goldberg
December 11, 2018 | 4-6pm
Ian Rowe
Michael Barone
January 9, 2019 | 4-6pm
Ramesh Ponnuru
Mona Charen
February 12, 2019 | 4-6pm
Eliot Cohen
Yuval Levin
March 26, 2019 | 4-6pm
William Damon
Robert P. George
April 11, 2018 | 4-6pm
Arthur Brooks
Adam Meyerson
May 1, 2019 | 4-6pm
Rod Paige
June 13, 2019 | 4-6pm
William Bennett