Experts to meet at university on achievement gap.
By: David Campbell
A conference on "School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps" will be held 8:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Friday at Princeton University’s Robertson Hall.
The conference will examine the latest research on problems confronting educators in dealing with achievement gaps among students. It will address issues raised in the February issue of the journal "The Future of Children," the first issue to be published by Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The issue focuses on the social, emotional and academic skills of children and the factors that determine them, the university said.
Participants will include authors and academics, representatives from the country’s local departments of education, professional educators, policy analysts and members of educational nonprofit organizations.
The conference is open to the public, but space is limited. To register for the conference, contact Maureen Marchetta, outreach coordinator for the journal, at (609) 258-6976.
In a news release last week, the Hispanic Directors Association of New Jersey criticized the organizers of the conference for excluding Hispanic panelists from the event.
HDANJ said it urged organizers to diversify the panels. In response, Ana Berdecia, a prominent educator who is Hispanic, was invited to serve as the moderator of one panel, which the group indicated was not enough.
"We have no objection to any particular panelist," said Daniel Santo Pietro, HDANJ executive director. "It is the lack of representation of our community that is troubling."
Princeton University spokesman Eric Quinones called the organization "misinformed."
"This is an important conference at which substantial work will take place, and there is Latino representation among the diverse group of speakers," Mr. Quinones said Monday.
HDANJ is an umbrella organization of 30 community-based Hispanic organizations across New Jersey, including 10 agencies that run preschools with bilingual programs serving more than 1,000 students. Last year, the organization developed a working manual for preschool centers dealing with multicultural populations. Ms. Berdecia was the chief editor of the manual, HDANJ said in its release.