Join The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute at 1 p.m. ET Thursday for a webinar about the “skills landscape” and how education and AI could help unlock new avenues for equity, mobility and opportunity. 

PPI’s Bruno Manno will first lead a conversation with Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, about the potential for AI to accelerate the pace of change and what this means for students and workers. 

Kerry McKittrick, co-director of the Harvard Project on the Workforce, will then moderate a panel with Judy Goldstein, senior vice president of American Student Assistance, and Carlo Salerno of the Burning Glass Institute.

Sign up for the Zoom or tune in to this page Thursday at 1 p.m. ET to stream the event.

More AI coverage from The 74: 

• AI Education Is the New Space Race. Here’s How America Must Respond

• OpenAI’s Education Leader on AI’s ‘Massive Productivity Boost’ for Schools, Teachers

• AI-Fueled Testing, From the Mouths of Babes

• Artificial Intelligence and Schools: When Tech Makers and Educators Collaborate, AI Doesn’t Have to be Scary

• Leanlab Founder Says Ed Tech Should Root Itself in Community Voice, Co-Design

Increasing numbers of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are acting as incubators for innovation in the teaching profession, and helping to grow the nation’s Black teacher pipeline.

The 74 recently partnered with the Progressive Policy Institute for an online panel examining how HBCUs are key contributors to bolstering Black educators.

In the replay below, you’ll hear from experts Katherine Norris of Howard University’s College of Education, Dr. Artesius Miller of Morehouse College and Utopian Academy for the Arts Charter School, Sharif El-Mekki from the Center for Black Teacher Development and The 74’s Marianna McMurdock. Watch the full conversation:

Go Deeper: Explore our recent coverage of the teacher workforce below.

• How Black Educators in America’s Fastest-Shrinking City Are Reimagining Teacher Pipelines

• Teacher Prep Programs See ‘Encouraging’ Growth, New Federal Data Reveal

• Breaking Down the Walls to Teaching: Alternative Pipelines Boom

• Preserving Black History Starts with Ensuring There Are Black Teachers

Join The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute at 1 p.m. ET Wednesday for an online panel discussing the influence of HBCUs in revolutionizing K-12 education. You’ll hear from leaders Dr. Kathryn Procope, executive director of Howard University Middle School of Mathematics and Science; Dr. Angela Lang, founder of I Dream Big Charter School at Stillman College; and Dr. Quinhon Scott, executive director of Coppin Academy High School at Coppin University. Curtis Valentine of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project will moderate. 

or tune in to this page Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET to stream the event.

Recent coverage of K-12 innovation from The 74: 

• 189 Innovative School Leaders: Teacher Staffing, AI, Mental Health Top Ed Issues
  
• 40 Years After ‘A Nation At Risk,’ Could Curriculum Reform Finally Move the Needle on Academic Improvement?
  
• Black Education Entrepreneurs — and Parents — Are Pushing the Boundaries of School Choice
  
• National Poll Finds Overwhelming Support Among Black Teachers & Parents for ESAs

Join The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute at 1 p.m. ET Thursday for an online panel examining the role HBCUs can play as charter school authorizers, providing stronger oversight and governance and thus ensuring better educational opportunities for students. You’ll hear from experts Dr. Nina Gilbert of Morehouse College, Dr. Karega Rausch of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and Dr. Evelyn Edney of Delaware State University.

or tune in to this page Thursday at 1 p.m. ET to stream the event.

These were the key areas of focus during a special Tuesday webinar presented by the Progressive Policy Institute and The 74. 

The Nov. 14 conversation about the past, present and future of HBCUs featured Georgia state Rep. El Mahdi Holly, Tennessee state Rep. Jesse Chism, Morehouse College’s Dr. Nina Gilbert, National Association of Charter School Authorizers CEO Dr. Karega Rausch and PPI’s Curtis Valentine. Watch the full replay:

Go deeper — Explore our archives on HBCUs: 

• Howard University is a Center of Black Excellence: Here’s Why I Almost Didn’t Get the Chance to Attend

• Why More Big Employers Are Teaming Up with Historically Black Colleges (Read more)

• Q&A: UNCF CEO Michael Lomax on Providing More Resources for Low-Income Kids for Journey ‘To and Through’ College

• From 2021: Students Enter Second Week of Sit-In at Howard University Demanding Better Housing, Trustee Seats (Read more)

If you can’t view the video, click here to watch.

Sponsored by The 74 and the Reinventing America’s Schools project of the Progressive Policy Institute, the online panel will also include former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Alan Page, former Minnesota Supreme Court justice; Ben Austin of Education Civil Rights Now; and Dr. Pedro Noguera of the University of Southern California. Curtis Valentine, co-director of Reinventing America’s Schools, will moderate. This will be an important conversation; join us at 1 p.m. Eastern.

You can watch the panelists talk about this fascinating subject right here when the event starts.

.

Some recent coverage of this issue from The 74: 

• Austin: It’s Long Past Time to Put Kids First By Making Education a Civil Right for all Students
  
• Proposed California Ballot Measure Would Give Parents ‘Legal Standing’ to Sue for Better Schools as Right-to-Education Efforts Spread
  
• A Legal Right to Literacy: 10 Kids Sued California for Failing to Teach Them to Read. Could Their Settlement Set a Precedent for Other Struggling Schools?

• Michigan Agrees to Aid Detroit Schools With $100 Million in Dedicated Literacy Funds After Courts Agree With New Legal Theory That Students Have Right to Read

These are some of the questions that will kick off the Dec. 15 webinar “Voting With Their Feet: Responding to Increased Demand for Innovative Schools,” presented by The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute and set to take place Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET. The event is free and open to the public; refresh this page at 2 p.m. to stream here or simply

Panelists will include such leaders and experts as Dave Sokola, Delaware State Senator; Jessica Sutter, D.C. State Board of Education; A.J. Crabil, Director of Governance for the Council of the Great City Schools; and Debbie Veney, Senior VP, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The panel will also feature two parents: Matt Mohler of Tallahassee, Florida, and Katrina Merkerson of Birmingham, Alabama. 

For more information on the event, and to sign up to receive a livestream link, please .

Some recent school choice coverage from The 74:

• ‘Equal Treatment, not Special Treatment’: Conservative Supreme Court Justices Appear Ready to Strike Down Religious Barriers to Public School Choice Funding
• For Learning Pod Teachers, a Pandemic Paradigm Shift: Why So Many Now Say They Don’t Want to Return to Traditional Classrooms
• In Dress Code Case, Federal Appeals Court to Weigh in on Public Status of Charter Schools

“I think it’s named poorly, which probably leads to who gets to sit at the table and make decisions,” said Cole, founder of the education advocacy group Energy Convertors. “It shouldn’t be called ’school choice’; it should be called ‘parent choice.’”

“It’s always going to be parents and students for me.”

Empowering parents, particularly those of color, to have a voice in how and where their children are schooled was one of the key themes of an Aug. 4 panel discussion presented by The 74 and the Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools program.

As Cole put it, parents “have to be at the very head of that table and they have to be the coaches and quarterbacks of those teams because they are the people that have to live with the consequences of what these systems are doing with our babies.”

Giving parents a choice is one thing. But giving them good choices is another, former Georgia state Rep. Alisha Morgan pointed out. “There are parents here in Georgia,” she said, “who are heartbroken, who are facing anxiety right now because they are faced with not having enough choices for their kids, having no choices at all or just having really really poor choices.”

Morgan said she was disappointed that the loudest calls for more choice have come from advocates, rather than parents or students. “We don’t have the folks that are directly affected by this as the most significant part of the movement,” Morgan said.

“It’s mostly us advocates … who are out front, who understand this, who are doing it. But we don’t see the number of parents that we need to see. And we don’t see the number of young people.”

“We lack the sense of urgency that we need that would have existed in other movements.”

She also noted how proponents of school choice — or parent choice, as Cole would put it — come to the issue from a full compass of viewpoints. “It’s about equity for some and leveling the playing field for others. It might be about the free market for some; it’s about escaping schools that don’t work or just finding a school that just meets the needs of a child.”

“But I don’t know if we speak with one sound voice,” she added. “I don’t know if we have a clear direction or a clear end goal when it comes to choice.”

The panel was a bookend to a similar event presented in June by PPI and The 74, which focused on the 30th anniversary of the first law authorizing charter schools. While that conversation assessed the progress, frustrations and lessons of the past 30 years, the Aug. 4 discussion sought to peer into the future and address what school choice, charters and the entire education system would look like at the midway point of this century.

Naomi Shelton, CEO of the National Charter Collaborative, spoke forcefully about how Black and brown charter school leaders, particularly those running stand-alone schools, need more and better support.

Shelton called for an “overarching level of support and advocacy and making sure that we’re … amplifying the work of these single-site leaders.”

“We can talk all about the big-box chains of charter schools,” she said, “but it’s the people who have decided to commit themselves to the individuals that are in the communities and that look like them that need the support right now.”

Patrick Jones, senior vice president of the Mind Trust, called for the “building of a comprehensive ecosystem around education” to benefit school children of color.

“We can’t solve this problem just by getting schools to become better,” he said. “If prosperity in our community is going to be sustainable, we must understand that all academic, social and economic aspects of what schooling is is our responsibility. The whitest space in school reform right now is the finance room in any school district and in any charter school.”

Jada Bolar, executive producer of the National Parents Union, offered a first-hand account of what school choice could mean to a young student of color in Akron, Ohio. Ten years ago, Jada’s mother, Kelly Williams-Bolar, after being convicted of lying about her residency to get Jada and her sister into a better school district.

In her new district, known as Copley-Fairlawn, “we had greenhouses; we had computer labs; we had a rock-climbing wall,” Bolar said. By contrast, “in Akron, Ohio, we had a box, with dirt. And that was our greenhouse.”

Her mom’s decisions “originally did backfire, but it set me up for the rest of my life,” Bolar said. After her mother’s arrest, an anonymous donor came forward to pay her way into a private school. “He reached to my mom and said, ‘I’m super moved by your story. I want to help. I want to make sure that your daughter is continuing to get a better education.”