The International Reading Association is sponsoring a live webcast on October 15, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. EST, in which Jon Schnur, education advisor to President Obama, and Phil Handy, who serves the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney in the same role, will debate education policy matters at stake in the 2012 election.
Registration for the live webcast is free at www.edweek.org. The webcast is co-hosted by Education Week, the leading education trade paper, and Teachers College at Columbia University. The debate will be moderated by Susan Fuhrman, president of Teachers College. A panel discussion featuring education journalists and others will immediately follow the debate.
Schnur, co-founder of America Achieves, previously served as senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and co-chairman of the Obama for America Education Policy Committee. Handy, higher education co-chair of the Ed-Policy Advisory Group, is CEO of Strategic Industries. He formerly served as chairman of the Florida State Board of Education, and was twice appointed by President George W. Bush as vice chairman to the National Board for Education Sciences.
“Everyone concerned about the education of the nation’s students will want to take advantage of this special opportunity,” said Marcie Craig Post, executive director of the International Reading Association. “We are thrilled to sponsor this valuable webcast, and we are encouraging our members and the public at large to register and join in.”
Coming less than a month before the U.S. presidential election, the webcast will provide audience members with an excellent opportunity to hear representatives of the democratic and republican candidates elucidate their parties’ respective education platforms and contest major policy issues that will affect the nation’s schools over the next four years.
Their exchanges will provide voters with a clear sense of where the candidates’ views diverge, and what the consequences of their election might mean for teachers and school administrators across the country. Education policy has already become a flashpoint in the campaign as the candidates have taken up such issues as raising standards for student achievement and teacher performance, the achievement gap, early learning programs, student loans, STEM subjects, merit pay, school choice, and vouchers.