Education Matters – Why You Shouldn’t Miss Our Next Event
Don’t get me wrong — online discussion and interaction is great. As the in-house digital community guy, I should know.
But some topics, like the future of Hawaii’s public education system, deserve a real life discussion, with a real life audience. Hopefully, there’ll be some real life results, too.
So Civil Beat and The Value of Hawaii will be hosting a live discussion about Hawaii’s public education and prison systems. Yes, you read that right – the two topics are related. It seems that in Hawaii, spending on prisons keeps growing while spending on education keeps shrinking. I’ll leave the details to our guest speakers.
The Speakers
We’ve invited four speakers, all of whom wrote essays that led to our discussion topic for this Wednesday.
- The Value of Hawaii: University of Hawaii by Neal Milner
- The Value of Hawaii: Public Education by Mari Matsuda
- The Value of Hawaii: Prisons by Meda Chesney-Lind and Kat Brady
Education
Our Education Reporter-Host Katherine Poythress will be moderating the event, and has been writing about various factors that affect Hawaii’s schools. Here are some highlights from her coverage. Last week, Katherine wrote about how advancements in technology have changed online testing for students:
After failing in its first bid for a Race to the Top grant, Hawaii was ranked third out of 36 applicants in the second phase and named in August 2010 among 10 grant winners. The state will receive $75 million over the next four years to implement the reforms it proposes in its 214-page application.
With issues as important as education, there’s no avoiding politics. Yet Hawaii residents continue to either be confused by or ignore the political aspects of the state’s education. Last month’s primary election voters cast only 57% of possible votes on Oahu for the island’s three at-large candidates for the Board of Education.
Join Us
So if you’re interested in hearing more, join us on Wednesday October 13, at 5:30 p.m. The invite is available to everyone, we just ask that you RSVP (beatup@civilbeat.com) so we can reserve your spot. I hope to see you there!
Live on the Web
Can’t make the event in person? We’ll be live-streaming the event here, beginning around 5:50 p.m on Wednesday. If you’d like to ask a question, record your question on YouTube or directly on our and send us the link to beatup@civilbeat.com. We’ll be showing the most engaging questions to the live audience and have the speakers comment on them.
No video? No problem. Send us any questions in advance to beatup@civilbeat.com and we’ll ask the speakers on your behalf. We don’t always have time for all of them, so be sure to ask something new and interesting that the live and web audiences will benefit from.
