MEDIA ADVISORY

California Secretary of Education Alan Bersin will discuss high school reform at 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 5, in Cubberley Auditorium.

His lecture will be free and open to the public.

Bersin will describe the structural, instructional, policy and political obstacles to high school reform and analyze the prospects for change in a talk titled "Reinventing the American High School: Back to the Future?" Unlike the progress made in elementary grades through standards-based education, improvements have not been as clearly evident in secondary schools, he says.

Bersin, who has been teaching a seminar this year in applied policy analysis with education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, was appointed secretary of education last July by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. From 1998 to 2005, Bersin was superintendent of public education for San Diego City Schools, where he worked to improve student achievement and modernized the system's business infrastructure to support teaching and learning in the classroom.

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