[applause] thank you very much. I must begin by apologizing for holding you folk up for almost 20 minutes. Now that newark is revitalizing the traffic at this time [laughter] it is impossible. But thats a good thing, i think. So while i apologize, im also happy that i got caught up in newarks overflow traffic tonight. Its my role to lay out the ground rules for our conversation. We will begin with the author, dale russ cough Dale Russakoff, making a presentation. She will then be fold by the three panelists who have joined us to, in effect, comment on what dale has written and what she will say to us tonight. Dales comments will be about, about 15 minutes. That means that the panelists will each get about ten minutes to respond. Is that all right, panel . Okay. We can have ongoing conversation after those initial remarks have been made. After they have made their presentations, then we will open the floor for comments, questions from the audience, and i think we have a microphone here, we may have another mic somewhere in the room, but i dont see it. Im assuming then that folk who are interested in posing questions should approach the microphone, and your questions will be entertained by either the author or the members of the panel. So lets get into this conversation as quickly as we can given the time ive wasted getting here. Dale russakoff spent eight years as a reporter for the Washington Post covering politics, education, social did i say 8 28 o 20 years . [laughter] 20 years, forgive me, dale. Covering education, social policy and other topics. She worked for four years on the prize which is her first book. Jelani cobb, a frequent academic guest, says that with the prize, dale has brilliantly rendered the hopes, complexities, pitfalls and flaws of the efforts to reform american education. This is not simply the compelling story of a single conflictridden school system, it is a metaphor for the faming institutions failing institutions that have betrayed an entire generation of american children. With that, Dale Russakoff. [applause] thank everyone for coming tonight. I would like to start by telling you why writing this book became so important to me. It began for me literally the day that the zuckerberg gift was announced. I had seen an article in the star ledger saying this was going to happen on the Oprah Winfrey show. I had never watched oprah in my life. On september 24, 2010, i was absolutely electrified to see this 26yearold billionaire pledge 100 million to the Newark Schools and also to cory booker and Chris Christie talk about using the money to transform education in newark, Public Education work for the nations poorest children. To me, 100 million sounded like all the money in the world, and booker, christie and the reform leaders who praised them beginning with education secretary arne duncan on behalf of president obama sounded so sure of themselves. We know what works, was their phrase. They would take the best ideas of the education Reform Movement, bring them all to newark, and in bookers words, they would flip a district. I didnt believe they would achieve change on the miraculous scale they talked about, but i did expect to see dramatic advances, and i wanted to get as close to this process as i possibly could because this is exactly the reformers and their opponents [inaudible] this impassioned National Debate had a huge hole, and the majority in newark and and around the country were stranded in that hole. Ill give you two illustrations of this from my reporting early on. If you remember for most of the first year after the gift was announced, Cami Anderson had not arrived to become the superintendent. A group of consultants were calling the shots within the district which was being run by the state department of education. They did some very important work, in particular getting a handle on the tenure process, but the most public thing they did was to identify which of the absolutely worst District Schools to close to make way for expanding Charter Schools one of their primary goals. One school they identified was 15th avenue where for years barely 20 of children had been reading at grade level. Very little was going right for kids at this school, so they designated it to close, and North Star Academy one of the highest performing charters in the state was to move n. North stars model was starting with kindergarten and would grow one grade each year, so no one currently at 15th avenue would be eligible to go there. The consultants decided that the 330 children at 15th avenue from grades k7 would be transferred to a k8 school just across Westside Park. Now, if you were looking at a map, this made perfect sense because the Second School was gee graphicically close, and it was also underpopulated, so it had plenty of room. But if you knew the neighborhood at the ground level, which the consultants did not, you would know Westside Park is a hangout for be drug dealers and gang members and that children should not be walking through it every day to get to and from school. I attended a pta meeting at 15th avenue, and the parents were terrified. They wanted to know how people who professed such concern for their children would come up with such a plan. Moreover, the school where they were going wasnt much were betr than 15th avenue. It, too, was detz nateed as a failing school. One father said theyre just taking the problem and moving it across the park. So the reformers had a really powerful diagnosis for all that was wrong with the existing system, but they didnt have a formula for fixing it without causing stress on the schools where the majority of kids were still being educated. One thing i learned in cities in particular, its an ecosystem. Changes in one area have consequences in another, many of them unintended. Okay, scene two. I attended a public forum that was held one saturday morning on a new Alternative High School graduation test rlt for the past several years, students who failed the regular High School Test had taken an alternative test that was much shorter and easier and was graded by their own teachers, so almost everyone who took it passed. The state was proposing to use a new test that would raise the bar and be graded by a disinterested party. A number of civil rights organizations participated in the forum, and they argued strenuously against the new test. Some 3,000 students who would have passed the test under the old system would fail it under the new one. As they put it, one of the most consequential things you can do to students is to deny them a high schooldiploma. This is undoubtedly true, but i also found myself wondering how about denying them a High School Education . If students couldnt pass this very basic test, what did a High School Diploma mean . Again, here was a forceful, impassioned voice in the education debate talking past some of the biggest problems children navigated in newark and cities like it every day. It seemed clear this was an opportunity for journalism, to write a full story of how both the status quo and the reforms were affecting all Newark School children in Charter Schools and in District Schools. I wanted to see education from every perspective in the debate, but most importantly, from the eye view of children and the teachers who worked every day to reach them against incredible odds. If i could write a story, a book about education in newark that was indisputably true and thorough, essentially filling in the holes that existed in both sides of the National Conversation, i hoped that it could spur a more Honest Exchange about what children and schools in newark truly need to succeed. What should this conversation look like . I have a suggestion. Newark and cities like it desperately need to get more resources to classrooms to support children and their teachers. The Reform Movement has a mantra. It goes poverty is an excuse for failure in District Schools in newark and across the country. That is unquestionably true for some people in some schools. But poverty is also a root cause of failure for children who literally are traumatized from growing up amid violence, family strife and constant instability. Here is another example from my reporting. Avon Avenue School is located in one of the poorest areas in newark. I attended the kindergarten class there of whom 15 out of 26 had Child Welfare cases open; alleged neglect, exposure to violence and drugs. Some of the children in that class were already so angry at age 5 that they routinely would hit other children and throw chairs at them and the teachers s. So not only were these children unable to learn, they frightened some class mates to the point that they couldnt learn either. That class had one of the best teachers in any Newark Charter or District School, but on many days her extraordinary skills were not enough to overcome those challenges. She needed help. I also p spent time in spark academy, a kip elementary school. Spark had some students although not as many who were equally troubled. They also had way more resources to support them and their teachers. They had two teachers or in classrooms from kindergarten through grade three. They had a tutor for every grade to support children who couldnt keep up even with two teachers. They had three social workers who did therapy with a total of 70 children a week while avon had one social worker, one teacher per classroom, and if they had a tutor, they had one for the whole school. And spark had a dean of students whose job it was was to make sure there was an adult in every childs life to support the childs learning if not a parent, a family friend, a god parent, a neighbor. The principal of spark said there was no way the school could have had the academic results it did without those extra resources. In other words, avon couldnt possibly compete. Spark had these resources because kip gets more than 12,000 per student gives more than 12,000 per student to spark whereas the Newark Public School got less than 8,000 per student to avon. Have been used for generations to do more than educate children. They have been a patronage pick for local political bosses and also an Employment Agency to counter poverty and instability in the city. The district has jobs and sweetheart deals with contractors that no longer serve the schools or the education of the children, if they ever did. Every stakeholder in education from the state to unions to parents to politicians to local Community Organizations ought to figure out how to get as many of these resources to children and the teachers and principals who know their needs best. Secondly, as the state actively supports the expansion of charters in newark, it would share responsibility for the upheaval and stress which is placed on Newark Schools. A prominent education reforeman at the university of washington reformer at the university of washington actually said she believed there should be a pottery barn rule for the proponents of changing of existing School Districts. You broke it, you bought it. Id just like to touch on one more, and thats the role of private philanthropists. For generations the foundations of deceased early 20th century industrialists dominated education philanthropy, but since 2000 living billionaires have displaced them. Bill gates of microsoft be, the Walton Family of the wall mort fortune. Walmart fortune. They are making targeted, very large donations in hope of disrupting the existing Education System which they see as antiquated and unequal to the task of educating the next generation. Thats the context in which Mark Zuckerberg came to pledge 100 million to schools in newark, a city he had never visited. He was 26 at the time, the richest millennial on the planet, and he hoped to transform the education world. He came to the cause of education through personal experience. His girlfriend, now his wife Priscilla Chan had worked as a teacher for a year after college, and when they socialized with friends in silicon valley, he felt their contemporaries treated her as if she were doing charity work. Yet, in his view, teaching was one of the most important jobs in society. His hope was to create a teachers contract that would raise the status of Teachers First in newark and then in america. His hope was to pay very large bonuses to the very best teachers, up to 50 over and above their base salary. These were the kinds of rewards paid to facebook, and he believed a similar system would attract the best College Graduates in the country into teaching. Booker and christie added to this a plan to expand Charter School is the and radically restructure District Schools. They thought they would arrive within five years at a mold, a proof point that zucker berg with his philanthropy could take to cities across the country, solving the education crisis in all of urban network. As we all know urban america. As we all know, that did not happen. But Mark Zuckerberg did end up spending 100 million in newark, and Charter Schools have grown to serve more than 40 of newarks students. More than a third of the schools have been removed, repurposed, redesigned or taken over by charters. Most of this process has taken place without Public Participation because philanthropy, for all the good it does, is one of the least Democratic Institutions in american life. Wealthy donors and their privatelyappointed boards decide where the money goes. If people are unhappy with the philanthropy of bill gates, they cant vote them out. The staff of the foundation for newarks future tried hard to bring more voices to the table, but the board of the foundation insisted on calling the shots. There are signs that zuckerberg is learning this approach is not only disrespectful, its actually not smart philanthropy. There are many, many skills and passionate people on the ground in cities where reformers are at work, even local foundations who have worked in education for decades. And all of these people and organizations know intimately what children and schools need in order to improve. I think almost everyone, regardless of their views on education, hopes that the next chapter of change in the city draws deeply from all the accumulated wisdom that newark has to off. Thank you. [applause] has to offer. Thank you. [applause] okay, okay. Were off and running. We have three panelists, the first of whom is shah nay howard, she will be followed by mary bennett and then ryan hill. Shah nay harris serves as Vice President of Corporate Giving at the Prudential Foundation which she oversees 50 million in grants and charitable contributions for prudentials Corporate Responsibility program. Prior to joining prudential in 2004, she was the director of the philanthropic arm of the new jersey innocents and the new jersey be nets and the new Jersey Devils organizations. Before that she was director of Community Schools in newark where she was responsible for brokering Community Resources to key schools in the Newark Public Schools. Harris serves on the board of trustee of jersey can, an add advocacy organization, and is also chairperson of the newark trust for education. Thank you. Be. [applause] can everyone hear me . Be so when i was asked to do this panel, i had to pause a bit because in many ways, i think, you know, the last four years has been a real opportunity to reflect on a National Conversation that is happening about Public Education. And from where i sit and the experiences that ive had as a newark native, as someone who started their career working in the Newark Public Schools not as an educator or teacher, but as a nonprofit leader that provided supportive services, utilizing a Community School model. And its, its very interesting to see kind of the multiple perspectives and the complexity of this problem. But before i kind of give my reflections on the role of philanthropy which i think dale kind of [inaudible] and the observations that she experienced, i want to, one, thank the Newark Public Library for hosting such an important on screening. I think the reflection of diverse stakeholders in this room demonstrates that there have havent been a lot of opportunities to have a democratic conversation about this issue. So im excited about the opportunity to continue this conversation, because we all are accountable to insuring that our chi