It is no secret that most school districts do a poor job of providing meaningful feedback to teachers on their strengths and weaknesses, supporting new and struggling teachers, and dismissing chronically ineffective teachers. Peer Assistance and Review, or PAR, programs are attempting to address many of these shortcomings in a number of districts throughout the country.

Yet at present the PAR programs operate in few districts, and the programs don't serve many teachers in the districts in which they do operate. Should more districts adopt Peer Review and Assistance programs? How can existing programs better meet their intended goals? Join us for a conversation to address these questions and others.

The International Labor Organization estimates at least 12.3 million adults and children are victims of forced labor, bonded labor, and commercial sexual servitude at any given moment. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 established the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department to combat these forms of modern slavery. The TVPA requires an annual assessment of “severe forms of trafficking in persons” and governments’ efforts to assess them.

The 2010 report will be released in June and ranks the United States for the first time. Please join us for a keynote address by Luis CdeBaca, ambassador-at-large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, who will preview the forthcoming report. The keynote will be followed by a discussion from a panel of experts who will address a range of issues including the report’s implications for both domestic and foreign policy and to what extent this issue is part of the State Department’s “Smart Power” approach to foreign policy.

Arizona's enactment of the harshest immigration control measure in the country has re-ignited a national debate over comprehensive immigration reform. Opposition to the law has come from across the political and community spectrum—from faith leaders to immigration and civil rights advocates to the leaders of cities and states across the country.

Federal courts have previously found state and local laws similar to Arizona's to be unconstitutional, ruling that only the federal government has the power to regulate immigration. But Congress has not yet acted on comprehensive immigration reform.

What impact would a law similar to Arizona's have on cities, counties, and law enforcement, and how should immigration be addressed? These questions and others will be answered by Mayor Phil Gordon of Phoenix, Arizona, who is currently handling this crisis in his home state; Mayor John DeStefano of New Haven, Connecticut; and Arlington County Board Member Walter Tejada.

EVENT CANCELLED: Due to scheduling conflicts this event has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Our dependence on oil is not sustainable. The United States has only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we use one-quarter of the oil produced annually. One in five barrels of U.S. oil comes from countries that the State Department considers to be "dangerous or unstable." The BP oil disaster is a tragic reminder of the human, economic, and environmental costs of oil dependence. And growing worldwide oil demand—led by China—will put additional upward pressure on oil prices. The United States needs comprehensive clean energy and climate policies that would decrease our dependence on this expensive and unstable commodity.

Please join Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and a panel of experts to discuss the national security, economic, and environmental consequences of our dependence on oil.

A national dialogue is developing around America's relationship with food. As it moves forward, there is a need to recognize that far too many low-income children simply do not have enough nutritious food to eat. More than 16 million of them live in food insecure households. This threatens the health and well-being of children and generally places great strain on their families.

The Obama administration, with the leadership of Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, has made a commitment to address the problem while Congress is in the process of reauthorizing the Child Nutrition Act. These circumstances provide a genuine opportunity for meaningful change. Charitable efforts and other policies aimed at reducing poverty also play an important role in finally achieving the goal of ending childhood hunger in America. This event will mark the release of a new Half In Ten/CAP paper, "Feeding Opportunity: Ending Child Hunger Furthers the Goal of Cutting U.S. Poverty in Half Over the Next Decade."

Work-family conflict is much higher in the United States than elsewhere in the developed world. The typical American middle-income family put in an average of 11 more hours a week in 2006 than it did in 1979. Families increasingly have all adults in the labor force and as a result fully 90 percent of American mothers and 95 percent of American fathers report work-family conflict.

The United States today has the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world due to a political impasse. Families across the income spectrum face work-family conflict in different ways, but they all need short-term and extended paid leave, new workplace flexibility rules,  high-quality, affordable childcare and eldercare, and freedom from discrimination based on family responsibilities. Yet, effective political action to reform our workplace rules has been stymied by the great divide among the poor, the professionals, and the missing middle.

Join us in a conversation about the day-in and day-out challenges posed by work-family conflict among families across different classes, communities, and incomes as well as a discussion about the politics of how we can move policymakers on these issues.

Inequity in the distribution of funds within school districts is an open secret. It's open because teacher mobility patterns and experienced-based salary schedules suggest that teachers in low-poverty schools earn higher salaries, on average, than teachers in high-poverty schools. It's secret because budgets and financial reports do not generally reflect actual expenditures.

The lynchpin of this open secret is the practice of pretending for the purposes of budgeting and reporting that all teachers earn the district average salary. The writing may be on the wall for this practice, however, as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 required that states furnish the Department of Education with a school-by-school report of actual expenditures by March 31, 2010.

Please join the Center for American Progress for the release of two new papers: "Lifting the Fog of Averages" describes the motivation, passage, and enforcement of California Senate Bill 687, which promotes transparency around school-level expenditure reporting; and "Comparable, Schmomparable" explores the data made available by the California law. Lively discussion will touch on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The Center for American Progress and the Progressive Book Club are pleased to announce the next event in the 2010 season of their joint authors series, "Moving Forward: Foundations of a New Progressive Era." The CAP/PBC series is designed to examine a range of issues emerging from the intersection of history, philosophy, political theory, and public policy. Each event features a different topic and authors with live and online audiences debating and discussing raised issues.

Our next talk will feature historian Julian E. Zelizer discussing his new book, Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security--From World War II to the War on Terrorism. In his book, Zelizer shows that partisan fighting has always shaped American foreign policy and the issue of national security has always been part of our domestic conflicts. Based on original archival findings, Arsenal of Democracy offers new insights into nearly every major national security issue since the beginning of the Cold War: from Franklin D. Roosevelt's masterful management of World War II to the partisanship that scarred John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, from Ronald Reagan's fight against Communism to George W. Bush's controversial war on terror.

Click here to purchase the book at a discounted rate when you join the Progressive Book Club.

Copies of Arsenal of Democracy will be available for purchase at the event.