On February 10 in Washington DC, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation awarded the second annual Fordham Prizes for Excellence in Education to Howard L. Fuller and Eric A. Hanushek, for valor and for distinguished scholarship respectively. The prizes are for $25,000 each.
The Prize for Valor is awarded to a leader who has made major contributions to education reform through noteworthy accomplishments at the national, state, local, and/or school levels. Fuller is distinguished professor of education and founder/director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Over the past two decades, he has become one of the nation’s most outspoken and effective advocates of educational choice. His efforts have helped bring a wide range of educational choices to parents in Milwaukee, and his work in establishing the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) promises to do the same for parents nationwide.
The Prize for Distinguished Scholarship is given to a scholar who has made major contributions to education reform via research, analysis, and successful engagement in the war of ideas. Hanushek is the Paul & Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Although he was dismissed as a “misled” economist in his early career for applying economic principles to education research, his findings have repeatedly refuted the education establishment’s belief that government can invest its way out of the education achievement problem. His analysis of education through the lens of econometrics is now an accepted approach in education reform.
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Further information about this year’s prizewinners, together with the procedure for nominating candidates for next year’s prizes, is available online at the Fordham Foundation’s Web site at http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/global/page.cfm?id=199.