Acting U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. will speak via tele-video conference during the Designing an Innovative Future for Early Learning Summit at the South by Southwest Education Conference (SXSWedu) in Austin, Texas at 3 p.m. CT on Tuesday, March 8. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Early Learning Libby Doggett and Joe Waters, executive vice president, Institute for Child Success, will co-chair the summit.
At 3 p.m. CT, King will join the summit and talk about why early learning matters and how the Department has taken up the President’s charge to expand access to high-quality preschool for every child in America by supporting a continuum of early learning opportunities. He will also talk about equity in STEM and “Computer Science for All.”
Prior to King, Doggett and Waters, will both give opening remarks and co-chair the six-hour summit, the first of its kind at the SXSWedu conference, which convenes practitioners, policy makers, and professionals interested in cross-sector change to positively benefit all young children and their families, with discussions and keynotes from a wide range of fields.
Also participating at the SXSWedu conference on Wednesday, March 9, Deputy Assistant Secretary Delegated Duties of Assistant Secretary for the Office Planning Evaluation and Policy Development Amy McIntosh, will be part of a panel on socioeconomic diversity. The panel will address future efforts to encourage socioeconomic equality in schools, recent efforts to encourage school diversity nationwide and possible policy solutions for the future that could be implemented at either the federal or state level to improve the economic and racial diversity of schools. McIntosh will discuss the Administration’s Stronger Together budget proposal, which would encourage the development of innovative, ambitious plans to increase socioeconomic diversity through voluntary, community-supported strategies and expand existing efforts in states and communities.