2018 Summit Speakers

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Highlighted speakers for the Summit on School Leadership Preparation and Development in Large Districts included:

  • Earl Franks, executive director of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Prior to leading the NAESP, Franks led the Council for Leaders in Alabama Schools (CLAS), a professional membership organization that served as a leading provider for school leader learning in that state.
  • J. Alvin Wilbanks, CEO/superintendent of Gwinnett County Public Schools in Georgia since 1996. Gwinnett has won the Broad Prize for Urban Education twice, in 2010 and 2014. Gwinnett’s Quality-Plus Leader Academy has been recognized for excellence by the Wallace Foundation, and every year Wilbanks personally leads training for the district’s future principals.
  • Steve Tozer, founding coordinator of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Urban Education Leadership program. The Christian Science Monitor has just reported that school leadership has been credited with a 20 point increase in high school graduation rates in Chicago between 2011 and 2017, and learning gains between third and eighth grade is outpacing 96 percent of U.S. school districts. Tozer will tell us how this leadership revolution is changing the nation’s third largest district.