Brooklyn LAB, which operates a small network of charter schools in New York City, has asked Les Lynn, founder and director of Argument-Centered Education, to join its new Academic Committee.  The Committee is chaired by Corey Scholes, director of Education for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where she advises the Foundation on strategic program initiatives and opportunities related to education.  Other Committee members include Noah Heller, a lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and Kevin Heffel, Chief Academic Officer of RePublic Schools, a network of schools spanning through Tennessee and Mississippi.

Argument-Centered Education conducts periodic interviews with leading educator-practitioners of argument-centered instruction.  This short video interview of Donna Lawrenz, a veteran educator of 7th grade language and literature at Peirce International School, is linked to her photo, and edited and condensed in the excerpt underneath.  Ms. Lawrenz has been working with Argument-Centered Education for two years.

Excerpted Interview of Argument-Centered Educator Donna Lawrenz

Q.   How is Peirce International School using argument-centered instruction?

Peirce is using argument-centered instruction as part of its International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.  Argument-centered instruction is inquiry-based, so it is a natural fit for IB.

The nation’s third largest school district, Chicago Public Schools, has endorsed Argument-Centered Education as an organization whose work helps schools authentically prepare their students for newly redesigned SAT college readiness and admissions exam.  In its 2017 guidebook, used by all 660 schools in the CPS system, Transitioning to the SAT Suite of Assessments, the CPS Office of Teaching and Learning singles out Argument-Centered Education as a national organization endorsed to support schools in their shift to greater emphasis on higher-order learning, critical thinking, and argumentation.