This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
by Jeseamy Muentes
More than 13,000 attendees, including education and policy leaders, will gather in Philadelphia this week at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association (AERA).
The event will be held April 3-7 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the downtown Philadelphia Marriott hotel. The theme is “The Power of Education Research for Innovation in Practice and Policy.” More than a dozen of the 100-plus sessions will include local leaders or have a Philadelphia focus.
Notebook editor and publisher Paul Socolar, Notebook contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa, and Parents United for Public Education co-founder Helen Gym are among the speakers.
Socolar will be speaking Friday during a session with School District Superintendent William Hite called “The Landscape of Education Reform in Philadelphia.” The session, which will be live-streamed, will discuss the ideas and challenges of improving one of the largest urban school districts in the nation.
Mezzacappa will take part in a symposium titled “Action Space for School Reform,” a discussion about Children Achieving and other 1990s Philadelphia school reform efforts.
Gym, a Philadelphia activist and Notebook blogger, will be one of two speakers during the session “Rising to the Challenges of Quality and Equality: The Promise of a Public Pedagogy.” Gym will talk about what educational research means for the lives of schoolchildren in Philadelphia.