Richard Ingersoll, a national expert on schools as a workplace, teachers as employees and teaching as a job, will be the keynote speaker at the University of Georgia College of Education’s seventh annual State of Education Conference on Sept. 18 at the UGA Center for Continuing Education.

The nominees for state school superintendent, Democrat Valerie Wilson and Republican Richard Woods, will be the luncheon speakers. The two will make brief presentations and answer questions.

Ingersoll, the Board of Overseers Professor of Education and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, will talk about his latest research on pre-service teacher preparation, teacher retention and the transformation of the teaching workforce. Ingersoll was a UGA faculty member in the department of sociology from 1995-2000.

The theme of the one-day conference is “Improving Student Achievement through Educator Preparation and PreK-16 Partnerships.” It will include concurrent sessions presented by UGA faculty and other education experts on:

• Student learning through a professional development-school collaboration;

• Measuring teacher impact on student achievement;

• Performance-based measures of teacher readiness;

• A collaborative approach to teacher induction; and 

• Strategies for retaining highly effective teachers.

The conference will conclude with TED-style talks by several Georgia educators, including Georgia’s 2015 Teacher of the Year, Amanda Miliner, a fourth-grade teacher at Miller Elementary in Houston County.

The State of Education Conference provides a professional learning experience for educational leaders, school board members, higher education faculty, community leaders and anyone who is interested in education in Georgia. Conference registration is $95 (includes workshop materials, refreshment breaks, lunch and parking pass). For additional conference and registration information, see www.coe.uga.edu/events.