Diversity of Education Voices Weigh-In as Part of Frontline Institute’s Civil Discourse Dinner Series at the National Press Club
MALVERN, PENNSYLVANIA – April 25, 2018 – The Frontline Research & Learning Institute today released the third print and online issue of The Line, a publication dedicated to encouraging civil discourse among K-12 education leaders. The “Liberty” edition explores the tensions between personal freedom and those of the collective as they play out in our nation’s schools.
Every day, school administrators make decisions that require considering individual rights and needs as well as the rights and needs of the majority. They weigh whether student speech is truly disruptive or just coarse or unkind. They determine if students can still relate to long-regarded “classics” and also be inspired by them. They work to give individual students, whose lives are unimaginably complicated by citizenship status or poverty, what they need to be successful.
“The institution of public schooling is a mirror of society. It should, therefore be no surprise given the extreme conflicts of societal beliefs and opinion that we witness conflicts of freedoms daily in our schools,” said John Deasy, editor-in-chief of The Line. “Under the umbrella of liberty, Issue 3 of The Line looks at how school leaders work through these challenges to protect their students.”
Contributors and interviews include Ben Austin, creator of California’s parent-trigger law; Wayne Bevis, principal, Lindblom Math and Science Academy (Chicago); Chris Cerf, former superintendent of Newark Public Schools; M.L. Carr, two-time NBA world champion; Sydnee Dickson, Utah superintendent of public instruction; Karla Estrada, deputy superintendent, academic and support services, Boston Public Schools; David Hardy, CEO, Lorain City School District (Lorain, OH); Brian Hauss, attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project; David Hudson, First Amendment ombudsman Newseum Institute and professor, Vanderbilt Law School; Meira Levinson, professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE) and former Undersecretary of Education; Krish Mohip, CEO, Youngstown City School District (Youngstown, OH); Ana Ponce, CEO, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy (Los Angeles;) Andre Spencer, superintendent, Harrison School District Two (Colorado Springs, CO); and Anna Stubblefield, interim superintendent, Lawrence Public Schools (Lawrence, KS).
“Frontline is thrilled to introduce the “liberty” issue of The Line,” said Tim Clifford, president and CEO, Frontline Education. “K-12 leaders face so many challenges; often making very difficult decisions about student rights and needs. We hope they will lean on The Line for new ideas as well as encouragement for advancing civil conversation and working together to solve their most pressing problems.”
The Line believes part of encouraging civil discourse on the most challenging K-12 issues also means modeling it. To that end, the Frontline Institute has launched a Civil Discourse Dinner Series that uses family-style dinners to engage education leaders — with many different perspectives — in conversation. The effort began in Boston and dinners have since happened in LA, Cleveland, Denver, Philadelphia and now in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, April 25 to mark the release of issue 3. Some of the participants include the aforementioned contributors to The Line, members of publication’s Editorial Advisory Board, current state, district and school leaders, as well as education advocates from academia and both left- and right-leaning think tanks like The Center for American Progress, The Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute.
New to The Line are more call-outs and suggestions for how education leaders can use the publication to encourage conversation about issues in their communities.
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About the Frontline Research & Learning Institute:
The Frontline Research & Learning Institute is a division of Frontline Education, an integrated insights partner providing our nation’s school districts with the leading human capital management based platform and solutions for K-12 education. The mission of the Institute is to provide data-driven research, resources and observations to support and advance the education community. The research is driven by the vast amount of data derived from solutions that Frontline provides to more than 12,000 educational organizations, representing over 80,000 schools and more than 60 percent of the nation’s school districts.