Inviting Doris Kearns Goodwin to speak to a gathering of thousands of educators brought together by the annual ASCD Empower19 conference might have seemed like a surprising choice at first. Over the past four decades, Goodwin has earned her moniker, “Historian of the presidents.” She’s written a half-dozen best-selling books, including ones on Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

But when ASCD board member Ben Shuldiner introduced Goodwin, he underscored that choosing her was no happy accident. Goodwin studies presidents as leaders, and today, those are needed more than ever in education. “Decisions are being made by people who haven’t been inside of the classroom,” he told the assembly—and those decisions are frequently “not being made in the best interests of our children and our teachers.

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