ATLANTA — The Southern Regional Education Board welcomes more than 200 state leaders from across the nation on May 7-8 for the nonprofit organization’s annual School Leadership Forum. The event links state leaders with national experts on school leadership and provides a venue for states to share ideas and develop plans to improve the preparation and working conditions for school leaders.
The event begins at 8 a.m. on Thursday at the Atlanta Airport Marriott and continues through lunch on Friday. The news media is invited. The host is SREB's nationally recognized Learning Centere Leadership Program, which works with states, universities, school districts and others to improve the quaolity of school leadership in public schools.
Topics and speakers will include:
SREB President Dave Spence on why improving students’ reading skills is the key to raising graduation rates and improving college readiness and on the role of school leaders in meeting this challenge, joined by Principal Vernon Prosser of Broome High School in Spartanburg, South Carolina;
Robert Balfanz of Johns Hopkins University on developing leadership teams of educators to improve traditionally low performing schools;
Alfred Tatum of the University of Illinois at Chicago on helping school leaders work with teachers to improve students’ reading significantly in the middle grades and high school;
Roy Nichols of the Mobile Public Schools and Richard Hayes of the University of South Alabama, and Judith Monseur of the Ohio Department of Education, on how universities and school districts can work together to improve school leadership substantially;
Examination of innovative school leadership improvement efforts in Alabama, Florida and Ohio, led by SREB Learning Centered Leadership Program Director Kathy O’Neill and Researcher Betty Fry;
How states are keeping the redesign of principals’ university-based preparation programs moving during the economic downturn, with Louisiana state leaders Jeanne Burns and Carmen Riedlinger, Nathan Roberts of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Kentucky state leaders Debbie Daniels and Phillip Rogers; and many other topics and speakers, including nationally known school improvement expert Gene Bottoms, SREB’s senior vice president.
To attend the forum or to learn more about your state’s efforts to improve training and working conditions for school principals and other school leaders — and your state’s participants in this conference — contact SREB Communications.
The Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB, based in Atlanta, was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More information is available online at www.sreb.org.
