Book Discussion with Ashley Berner: Pluralism and American Public Education

Ashley Berner’s new book, Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School, argues that the structure of public education is a key factor in the failure of America's public education system to fulfill the intellectual, civic, and moral aims for which it was created. The book challenges the philosophical basis for the traditional common school model and defends the educational pluralism that most liberal democracies enjoy. Berner provides a unique theoretical pathway that is neither libertarian nor state-focused and a pragmatic pathway that avoids the winner-takes-all approach of many contemporary debates about education. For the first time in nearly one hundred fifty years, changing the underlying structure of America’s public education system is both plausible and possible, and this book attempts  to set out why and how.

Ashley Berner is Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Assistant Professor of Education. She served previously as the Deputy Director of the CUNY Institute for Education Policy, and was Co-Director of the Education Project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia. Dr. Berner has published articles and book chapters on the relationship between educational structure and state funding in democratic nations, religious education and citizenship formation, and teacher preparation in different national contexts.

We invite Maryland Philanthropy Network members to read the book and join us for a discussion about how Berner's book coincides with the national education conversation and the potential positive and negative impacts to public education. 

The book is available for purchase or can be found in local libraries. Please click here to read a recent article based on the book and here to watch an interview with Scott Barron and Ashley Berner.

Sponsored by Maryland Philanthropy Network’s Education Funders Affinity Groups for Maryland Philanthropy Network Members only. Lunch will be served.