Aspen Institute Publications
Aspen Institute publications are listed below. Many are available for purchase through Google Checkout, a secure system for handling credit card transaction online. For assistance with ordering publications, please contact our Publications office by email or by phone at (410) 820.5433. Please note: Orders are shipped two times a week from our warehouse in Queenstown, MD, on the Eastern Shore.
Building Regional Markets: AGOA and the Economic Partnership Agreements
The publication looks at the intricacies of building regional markets with emphasis to AGOA and other economic partnership agreements.
Forging a New Partnership: The Story of Teacher Union and School District Collaboration in Pittsburgh
Forging a New Partnership: The Story of Teacher Union and School District Collaboration in Pittsburgh documents Pittsburgh's transformation from a typical, adversarial district-union dynamic to one of deep, substantive collaboration over the course of several years. This work has catapulted Pittsburgh to the vanguard of efforts to improve teacher effectiveness, and helped secure more than $80 million in philanthropic and federal grants. Through the voices of the principal participants, Forging a New Partnership tells the story of Pittsburgh's breakthrough collaboration and highlights important principles that can be applied in other contexts. Download publication
TransFarm Africa: Removing the Barriers to African Farm Prosperity
Highlights TransFarm's efforts of removing trade barriers to African farm prosperity through investing in Mtanga Farms in Tanzania.
News Cities: The Next Generation of Healthy Informed Communities
A report of the 2010 Forum on Aspen Institute Communications and Society. The report includes a description of the continuing difficulties, yet encouraging advances in local journalism, and a series of recommendations to strengthen public media, increase government transparency, encourage public engagement, promote digital and media literacy, and provide universal broadband access.
Race, Crime, and Punishment: Breaking the Connection in America
Race, Crime and Punishment examines the linkage of race, crime, and punishment in the public mind, and offers strategies for reducing the severe racial disproportionalities in the criminal justice system.
Solving the Dilbert Paradox
Solving the Dilbert Paradox is the volume resulting from the 2010 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Talent Development. This "Dilbert Paradox" finds expression in wasted opportunities for organizational learning, collaboration, and access to knowledge and ideas outside the corporate hierarchy. The report captures the insights of the participants during the conference and details how some large organizations, as well as start-ups and small companies, are experimenting by giving employees new opportunities to maximize innovation.
Designing and Implementing Teacher Performance Management Systems: Pitfalls and Possibilities
As new performance-management-related policies go from idea to implementation, policy makers and education leaders need to flesh-out what are still broad principles in many areas. This represents a significant inflection point for the teaching profession and the management of public school systems. Early decisions will determine whether the new evaluations form the basis of a new, more productive way of working in public education, or yet another policy pronouncement with little impact on outcomes.
In 2010, the Aspen Institute convened a diverse group of stakeholders -- senior leaders from districts, states, and the federal government; union leaders from both the AFT and NEA; technical assistance providers, social entrepreneurs, and scholars -- to discuss these issues. The workshop focused on designing and implementing teacher performance management systems.
This new Education & Society Program paper is a discussion of key themes and takeaways from the workshop. A set of 6 core principles emerged for guiding the development and implementation of new teacher evaluations and performance management policies. Using examples from the field, the paper expands on the principles and challenges policymakers to focus on comprehensive systems rather than "fixes" for discrete problems.
ANDE 2010 Impact Report
The 2010 ANDE Impact Report is a comprehensive assessment of the state of the SGB sector. It shares lessons learned about supporting and sustaining SGBs in emerging markets and addresses areas where improvement and mobilization are needed to further promote entrepreneurship to achieve poverty reduction around the world.
The report was released in March 2011 in conjunction with our Second Anniversary Celebration in London.
Read the full report. You may also read the executive summary in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Building Teacher Evaluation Systems: Learning From Leading Efforts
Ambitious reforms across the country are reshaping teacher evaluation and performance management. Designing new systems for measuring teacher effectiveness and using that information to increase student achievement are at the heart of these efforts and at the center of important policy debates. Yet little information exists about how these systems work in practice and how to use evaluations in concert with other levers to improve teaching and learning.
As policymakers and education leaders seek to accelerate reform in this area, it is essential to learn from efforts already underway. The Education & Society Program published three new reports: profiles of the performance management work in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and the Achievement First (AF) charter school network; and a synthesis of issues that emerge from the two profiles. Both DCPS and AF are at the forefront of efforts to re-design teacher evaluation, performance management, and compensation policies. The commonalities, distinctions, and early lessons learned in these initiatives represent an important learning laboratory for the field.
Building Teacher Evaluation Systems: Learning from Leading Efforts [Summary report]
Achievement First: Developing a Teacher Performance Management System that Recognizes Excellence
The Future of Work: What It Means for Individuals, Businesses, Markets and Governments
The Future of Work examines the challenges to conventional notions of work and organization brought on by new digital technologies and trends. As the velocity of change increases, institutions and individuals must adapt. Yet many structures, including those in education, government, business and the economy, often remain rooted in the past. The report captures the insights of the Nineteenth Annual Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology, where business leaders, technologists, international politicians, academics and innovators explored how global structures and institutions are being confronted by the 21st century realities of distributed knowledge, crowdsourcing, open platforms and networked environments. The report shares the solutions these leaders proposed for preserving individual well-being and defining a future world of work that benefits everyone involved.
