Public School Forum of North Carolina Names Joe Ableidinger Senior Director of Policy and Programs

RALEIGH, N.C., April 17, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Public School Forum of North Carolina today named Joe Ableidinger as its new Senior Director of Policy and Programs. In this new role, Joe will lead all policy, research and program activities at the Forum.

Joe is a nationally recognized expert in education innovation, including personalized learning models and emerging technologies in education. Before joining the Public School Forum, Joe spent nearly five years at Public Impact, a leading national education policy and management organization based in Chapel Hill, NC. He led project teams focused on a variety of education issues, including empowering teachers and school leaders through job redesign and strategic uses of technology, charter school quality and accountability, teacher and leader policy, education entrepreneurship, philanthropy in education, and school turnarounds.

"Joe brings an enormous amount of experience and depth to the Forum in terms of education analysis and innovative approaches to teaching as well as school and classroom design," said Keith Poston, President and Executive Director, Public School Forum of North Carolina. "Under Joe's leadership, our policy team will research existing and proposed North Carolina education policies, analyze their impact, and propose alternatives. Through this work, we will inform the debate on the issues of greatest importance to our state's students, educators, and families. Perhaps even more importantly, we'll look ahead, using best practices and cutting-edge thinking about how we ought to be educating our kids, rewarding our teachers, structuring our schools and classrooms, and moving policy discussions and public engagement forward in positive and collaborative ways." 

Before joining Public Impact, Joe taught high school English with the Fulbright Program in Korea and started a family resource center at an underperforming elementary school as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with Communities In Schools of Durham. He received his B.A. with highest honors from Duke University, his master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and his law degree with honors from Harvard Law School.

"I am thrilled to be joining the Public School Forum," Joe said. "I look forward to working under Keith's leadership to continue the Forum's longstanding tradition of serving as a nonpartisan engine for reasoned debate and informed education policymaking. At the same time, I am excited to work with teachers and school leaders from across the state to consider both established best practices and promising new solutions to education's most vexing challenges, all in service of giving all North Carolina students access to high-quality public schools."

Joe has served as a strategic advisor to schools, philanthropic foundations, government agencies, and education-focused nonprofit organizations. He has authored or co-authored numerous detailed reports, policy briefs, white papers, case studies, and other publications to influence policymaking and practice.

Joe's publications at Public Impact included: Virtual Schools: Assessing Progress and Accountability: Final Report of Study Findings, for the U.S. Department of Education; Interventions and Catalysts in Markets for Education Technology: Roles of City-Based Funders and Kick-Starting Reform: Three City-Based Organizations Show How to Transform Public Education, both for the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust); Quakertown Community School District: A Systematic Approach to Blended Learning that Focuses on District Leadership, Staffing, and Cost-Effectiveness, with the Alliance for Excellent Education; Charlotte, N.C.'s Project L.I.F.T.: New Teaching Roles Create Culture of Excellence in High-Need Schools, an Opportunity Culture case study; Leading Indicators of School Turnarounds: How to Know when Dramatic Change is on Track, for the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education and the School Turnaround Specialist Program at the University of Virginia; School Turnarounds in Colorado: Untangling a Web of Supports for Struggling Schools, for the Donnell-Kay Foundation; and Shooting for Stars: Cross-Sector Lessons for Retaining High-Performing Educators, for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Joyce Foundation. He also contributed to The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, by Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker, published by the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.

Joe is currently leading the planning phase of an effort to launch new breakthrough school models in North Carolina focused on innovative teaching roles and strategic uses of time and technology, supported by a planning grant from Next Generation Learning Challenges (http://nextgenlearning.org/).

About the Public School Forum of North Carolina

For nearly 30 years, the Public School Forum of North Carolina has worked to shape world-class public schools that inspire and support all children and drive a vibrant North Carolina economy through research, policy work, advocacy, and continuing education for educators and policymakers. Our focus areas are teaching and school leadership; expanded learning through programs after-school and beyond the classroom; educational achievement and innovation; and school finance. We also lead the Education Policy Institute that focuses on developing passionate education leaders, and on promoting sound education policy through continuous learning and issues forums for elected officials and candidates for state and local offices that affect education policy. For more information, visit http://www.ncforum.org/

For More Information:
Keith Poston
Public School Forum of NC
919-781-6833 x105 

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SOURCE Public School Forum of North Carolina