Interview with Anthony Jackson from the Asia Society

Anthony Jackson is Vice President for Education at Asia Society. He also leads Asia Society’s Partnership for Global Learning (PGL), a national membership network of practitioners and policymakers dedicated to integrating knowledge about Asia and the world as a mainstay of American education. Over the past six years, he has lead the development of Asia Society’s International Studies Schools Network, an effort within the PGL to create a network of small, effective, internationally-themed secondary schools across the country. Before joining Asia Society, he was a Director of the Walt Disney Company’s Disney Learning Partnership, where he designed and oversaw the Creative Learning Communities network of reforming elementary schools. Dr. Jackson, trained in both developmental psychology and education, is one of the nation’s leading experts on secondary school reform and adolescent development. After a stint on Capitol Hill as a Congressional Science Fellow he became a senior staff member on the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, chaired by George Miller (D-CA). Dr. Jackson later directed the Carnegie Corporation Task Force on the Education of Young Adolescents that produced the seminal Turning Points report, which became a key blueprint for the reform of thousands of middle schools nationwide. While at Carnegie Corporation he created and directed the Turning Points network of over 250 middle schools that operated in fifteen states, as well as in Los Angeles and New York City. He also co-authored the follow-up blueprint Turning Points 2000, which transformed many of the design principles in the original report into concrete action steps for new and reconstituted secondary schools. Many urban districts are now using Turning Points 2000 to guide secondary school reform initiatives. In 2004, Teachers College Press published the latest book co-authored by Jackson entitled Making the Most of Middle School: A Field Guide for Parents and Others.