Crosscut Festival

Closing performance gaps between student groups consumes nearly every conversation about American education. Usually, discussion collects around the possibility of biased testing or teachers. But the work of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris suggests another angle. In her pioneering research with low-income children in the San Francisco area, Dr. Burke Harris found that adverse — but common — childhood experiences like parental divorce, substance abuse or neglect can change students’ neurology and directly affect learning. Should public education expand its mission, moving from a tight focus on academic-concept delivery to something more holistic? Dr. Burke Harris will tackle this question in a moderated discussion with Washington’s Superintendent for Public Instruction and a national expert on multicultural education.