Educational Studies Prof. Carl Cohn participates in Harvard Educational Forum

School of Educational Studies Professor Carl Cohn spoke at Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Askwith Forum for leaders in education on Thursday, November 20. Cohn’s panel examined the demands of education leadership and the implications of these demands for preparation programs.

Cohn spoke alongside Norman Atkins, co-founder and president of Relay GSE; Peter Gorman, executive vice president of education services at Amplify; and Irma Zardoya, president and CEO of the NYC Leadership Academy.

The Askwith Forums are public lectures that bring together students, faculty, staff, and the community to encourage conversation and action on the highest-priority issues in education. This special Askwith Forum is part of a series of meetings that the Harvard Graduate School of Education will host in order to address the challenges of building leadership pipelines in the rapidly changing education sector. Other recent speakers have included Arne Duncan, Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Colin Powell, and Sal Khan.

Cohn, whose distinguished career in education has spanned more than 30 years, is the co-director of the Urban Leadership Program at CGU.

He served as the superintendent of schools for the San Diego Unified School District from 2005 to 2007 and as the superintendent of schools for the Long Beach Unified School District from 1992 to 2002. During his leadership in Long Beach, the district achieved record attendance, the lowest rate of suspension in a decade, decreases in student failure and dropout rates, and an increase in the number of students taking college preparatory classes.

In 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown appointed him to the state Board of Education, where he continues to serve.