John Merrow Speaking Fee, Schedule, Bio & Contact Details

John Merrow

Education Correspondent with PBS NewsHour and President of Learning Matters, Inc.

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New York, New York, United States

John Merrow

Biography

John Merrow began his career as an education reporter with National Public Radio with the weekly series, Options in Education, for which he received the George Polk Award in 1982. For over four decades, he served as Education Correspondent for PBS NewsHour and host of his own documentary PBS series, The Merrow Report.

His varied reporting was on the forefront of education journalism: He was the first NPR reporter to gain entrance to the People's Republic of China (1976); the first to videotape the college admission process (Williams College, 1985), and the initial force in exposing the illicit financial relationship between CHADD, a child advocacy group, and Ciba-Geigy, the pharmaceutical company that produces the A.D.D. drug Ritalin (1996). Merrow's work took him to all 50 states and a half dozen countries, from community colleges to kindergarten classrooms, from the front lines of teacher protests to policy debates on Capitol Hill. At the time of his retirement in late 2015, Merrow was the only reporter to have interviewed every U.S. Secretary of Education.

For his reporting, he received two George Foster Peabody Awards, the George Polk Award, Emmy nominations in 1984, 2005, and 2007, four CINE Golden Eagles, and numerous awards from the Education Writers Association. he is the author of Addicted to Reform: A 12-Step Program to Rescue Public Education (2017); The Influence of Teachers (2011); Choosing Excellence (2001), and co-editor of Declining by Degrees (2005). John Merrow also maintains a weekly blog, themerrowreport.com.

Merrow earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College, an M.A. in American Studies from Indiana University, and a doctorate in Education and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He received the McGraw Prize in Education in 2012, a Lifetime Achievement Award From the Academy Of Education Arts And Sciences in 2012, the James L. Fisher Award for Distinguished Service to Education in 2000, the HGSE Alumni Council Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education in 2006, The Horace Dutton Taft Medal in 2010, and honorary doctorates from Richard Stockton College (NJ) and Paul Smith's College (NY).

He lives in New York City with his wife, Joan Lonergan.

Your tremendous knowledge of Charter Schools made you the perfect person to lead the discussion. Please know our attendees loved the panel & rated it highly. I truly learned from your moderating techniques and hope to work with you again.

National Association of Public Charter Schools

Your presentation last weekend at our meeting in Washington, DC just knocked the ball out of the park! Thank you so much. Our people were talking about it all weekend, and in fact they’re still talking about it. To have the opportunity to interact with a critical friend with such a depth of experience is very unusual.

National Superintendents Roundtable

You were absolutely superb -- from asking probing questions to keeping the panelists and audience on-task. You were on fire! And we were overwhelmed with your closing and call for support of our organization. We are so grateful! The panelists and audience were also energized. We could not have asked for more.

Educacy

The 33rd Annual Conference of the Orton Dyslexia Society was greatly enhanced by your sensitive and provocative keynote address. The response by the audience was extremely positive.

Orton Dyslexia Society

Your tremendous knowledge of Charter Schools, all the way back to Itasca in 1988, made you the perfect person to lead the discussion. Please know our attendees loved the panel and rated it highly. I truly learned from your moderating techniques and hope to work with you again. Your impact on education is appreciated.

National Association of Public Charter Schools

A word of thanks to you for the splendid handling of the Town Meeting for the 1977 Presidential Scholars. As you could tell by the audience response, the event was one of the best received by the Scholars.

Thank you so much for your insightful and entertaining talk at Public Advocates’ 37th Anniversary Dinner on May 29th. Your combination of knowledge, humor and passion added greatly to the proceedings.

Thank you for moderating our recent debate on weighted student funding here at the Center for American Progress. We have received great feedback about the quality of the debate, and many attendees have expressed how highly informative they found the panel discussion. Your moderating skills greatly helped make this event a success.

Center for American Progress

On behalf of my colleagues, I wish to thank you for your invaluable participation. Your role as a moderator was greatly appreciated and proved to guide and direct a rich conversation.

Academy for Educational Development

Thank you for your serving as an outstanding moderator of the Achievement Gap session. Your session garnered rave reviews. I knew you would be the perfect person to take on the challenging role of engaging the audience for two and a half hours because of your deep knowledge and understanding of the issues at hand, as well as your talent for leading a lively discussion.

Campaign for Educational Equity, Teachers College

Your keynote presentation was extremely well received by the audience members, who enjoyed the substance, sweep and humor of your talk. Your address on the first evening of the conference helped to set a wonderful tone for the rest of the event.

Institute for Educational Leadership

It was a terrific speech: substantive, humorous and emotional. I have long admired your journalism. Now I will add public speaking to the list.

New American Schools

Your superb remarks at the Boys Club dinner are all the more outstanding the second time around. I showed the tape of your talk to my colleagues in the office, and each one reacts more positively than the last.

The Taft School

Thank you so much for facilitating the ECS Governors/CEOs Forum in Minneapolis, and for moderating three sessions at our Annual Meeting. Talk about taking advantage of your presence!We always receive terrific feedback from participants on your top-notch moderating skills. Your ideas, knowledge, experience and humor are an indispensable part of these productive discussions.

Education Commission of the States

John invited dialogue and unpacked complexities that provided important substantive takeaways for our audience. The feedback from our Fellows was resoundingly positive, with 95% ranking this session good to excellent. Most common comments were that they wished the panel could have lasted even longer, due to the richness of the discussion. We highly recommend John Merrow as a moderator, facilitator, chair, discussant, or speaker

Institute for Educational Leadership

John's presentation was outstanding. His breadth of experience and understanding of the complexity and challenges of our education system were a call to action as well as an affirmation of Montessori's potential to influence the future of education in this country. I look forward to keeping in touch with John and I hope to schedule him for another conference next year. I hope that more audiences can have the benefit of John's wisdom.

North American Montessori Teachers' Association

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John Merrow

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