Deputy State Superintendent to Visit for Informal Q&A on DPI’s Current and Future Directions

Feb. 25 event with Dr. John Johnson at Education Building is part of WCER's Interdisciplinary Training Program

February 18, 2022   |   By WCER Communications

UW–Madison will play host to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s second-in-command for a public discussion of the K-12 education agency’s current and future directions in a program sponsored by the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

DPI Deputy State Superintendent John Johnson will visit from noon to 1:30 p.m. CT on Friday, Feb. 25, in Room 159 of the Education Building, 1000 Bascom Mall. He was invited as part of WCER’s Interdisciplinary Training Program in Education Sciences (ITP), a weekly discussion series that connects graduate students with peers and experts on topics integral to professional success in education research.

The Feb. 25 program will be an informal question-and-answer session, with some prepared questions but plenty of room for audience participation, according to Eric Grodsky, a professor of sociology and educational policy studies, and deputy director of the ITP, as well as co-director of WCER’s Madison Education Partnership.

As with all ITP presentations, everyone is welcome to attend, not just the graduate students who are part of the program.

“​We’ll discuss how the state has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, what the Superintendent’s policy priorities are for the next few years, opportunities for change in Wisconsin’s system of public education, and challenges we confront in realizing those opportunities,” Grodsky says. “Although we have prepared discussion questions to guide our session, we encourage you to engage in and redirect the conversation.”

WCER’s ITP is one of a network of pre-doctoral training programs funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. Topics selected for presentations generally are not taught in common coursework, yet are necessary for success in an education researcher’s career.

The ITP is preparing a new generation of education science scholars by training them in methods of causal inference in the social sciences, engaging them in a weekly seminar and supporting their translational research through a variety of internship opportunities. The community of faculty and Ph.D.-level researchers that work with ITP Fellows come from academic departments in education, social work and across the social sciences. Fellows join an interdisciplinary research community including doctoral students in economics, political science, psychology, social welfare, sociology, educational leadership and policy analysis, educational policy studies and educational psychology.