The Hoover Institution in DC hosted the next installment of the Education 20/20 speaker series Tuesday, December 11. 2018 from 4:00-6:00 PM EST, featuring Washington Examiner senior political analyst Michael Barone and Public Preparatory Network CEO and Fordham Institute senior visiting fellow Ian Rowe.

Michael Barone argues that the Cold War–era was the golden age of gifted education. With America and the Soviet Union locked in a battle of brains, the education system actively worked to promote the best and brightest in the hope that they would help us innovate faster than our enemy to the east. Yet starting in the 1960s, Barone argues that the civil rights movement and war on poverty caused education policy to largely abandon a focus on excellence in favor of access and minimum standards. How can American education continue to embrace disadvantaged students without squandering the potential of gifted students, many of whom are also disadvantaged? And how can society restore excellence to a place of primacy in K–12 education?

Ian Rowe notes that major changes have occurred in recent decades in the family structures within which children are raised, yet the gauges typically used in education to evaluate and explain student achievement have stubbornly focused on race, class, gender, and geography. Rowe argues that we should routinely examine achievement by family structure groupings, too, so as to create a fuller understanding of the forces that impact achievement and the interventions that may be needed.
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