Think it’s just disparities in teacher quality and school leadership that contribute to the achievement gap between minority students and their peers? Think again. Disparities in technology training and access play a huge role in limiting achievement and post-secondary options for minority students. So what are individuals in Washington and across the nation doing to confront the technology achievement gap? Well, we’ve wrangled two frontrunners on this issue to speak at an upcoming breakfast you won’t want to miss.

Jane Margolis, a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Democracy, Education and Access at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, has spent her career studying the effects of technology access on the success of individuals. In Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing, Margolis looks at the daily experiences of students and teachers in three Los Angeles public high schools: an overcrowded urban high school, a math and science magnet school, and a well-funded school in an affluent neighborhood. What she finds is that insidious “virtual segregation” that maintains inequality.

To close the technology achievement gap, Margolis recommends closely examining school structures (such as course offerings and student-to-counselor ratios) and belief systems—including teachers’ assumptions about their students and students’ assumptions about themselves.  In order to frame these problems and solutions for Washington state, Trish Milines Dziko, past Microsoft executive and founder of the Technology Access Foundation (TAF), will speak to what her organization—as well as the newly founded TAF Academy in Federal Way—is doing to offer local minority students technology access and high-demand skills. Dziko will also moderate an intimate discuss with Margolis on what educators, community members and policymakers can do to make sure all students have the tools they need to excel—no matter path they take in life.

Date: Thursday, December 4
Time: 7:30-9 a.m.
Place: Madison Renaissance Hotel, Madison Ballroom
515 Madison Street, Seattle 98104 (Map)
Cost: $35 pre-paid (includes a book)
Tables: $250 for a table with 8 premium seats
Register:  ONLINE through Brown Paper Tickets or contact Kathleen Costello, 206.625.9655.