Read coverage of the panel in Education Week here (free registration required).

Featuring:

• Tom Loveless, Director, Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings
  Institution
• Nina Shokraii Rees, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and
  Improvement, U.S. Department of Education
  
• Bella Rosenberg, Assistant to the President, American Federation of
  Teachers
  
• Amy Stuart Wells, Professor of Sociology and Education, Teachers
  College, Columbia University
  
• Richard Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation, convener

While Iraq and the economy have dominated the presidential campaign, education reform represents an important topic for many voters. Charter schools recently were put front and center in the debate when the New York Times published the result of an American Federation of Teachers study, which showed that students in charter schools often performed lower on an important standardized test than children attending regular public schools. Since then there has been a firestorm of charges and countercharges about the effectiveness of charter schools. What does the latest evidence say? Given the Department of Education's recent decision to cut back on its survey of charter schools, is the data becoming harder to obtain? With the diversity of state charter school laws, are some types of laws more likely to produce good charter schools than others? What is the likely future of the charter school movement? Some of the nation's top experts will discuss these and other issues related to charter schools.