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This year’s Mary Bacigalupo Education Forum will be held on Saturday, November 15, 8:30 am – noon, at the Stoklosa School. The topic is “The Social and Economic Costs of Inadequate Education” by Dr. Henry Levin with a panel discussion to follow. The annual forums on education were conceived as a living tribute to Mary Bacigalupo who, before her untimely death in 2001, was involved in many educational and cultural groups in Lowell. She was a driving force behind the revitalization of the Citywide Parent Council and was a friend, mentor and inspiration to many of us who got involved with the schools in the 1990s. She believed strongly that every child could succeed in school given the chance, and that while we start out trying to help our own children, we end up wanting and working for the best for every child in the system.

The first forum, in 2006, with Dr. Jeff Howard of the Efficacy Institute was well-attended and energizing as Dr. Howard challenged us to make the system work for all of our students by having high expectations and using data to figure out which methods are the most effective. Dr. Joyce Epstein was the speaker in 2007, and spoke of how some schools are forging partnerships with families toward specific goals such as student behavior, improved attendance or reading proficiency.

This year’s speaker is a Professor of Economics and Education at Columbia University and is the founder and director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education. These credentials may set off some alarm bells for those who are against applying free market principals to public education, but his ideas on the subject are more subtle than that. It should be an informative morning! Coffee and refreshments will be served!