The Southern Education Foundation’s 2025 Issues Forum, Miles to Go: The Road to Education Justice, is set for Nov. 4–6, 2025, in New Orleans, Louisiana. At the Forum, we will gather to discuss education justice during plenary panels and breakout sessions led by practitioners, researchers, and other professionals. Find a sneak peek of the forum agenda below and register now to stay up to date as more details are announced.
Information about the agenda will be released on a rolling basis.
2025 SEF Issues Forum Agenda
Tuesday, Nov. 4
6 – 8:30 p.m.
Kick-Off Reception – Legacy & Reckoning: Education, Civil Rights, and the Road Ahead
Join us at the TEP Center on Tuesday, November 4, at 6pm CT for the kickoff reception to the Southern Education Foundation’s 2025 Issues Forum, Legacy & Reckoning: Education, Civil Rights, and the Road Ahead. This evening will honor the city’s enduring legacy of civil rights in education. We are honored to welcome Leona Tate, one of the four courageous students who helped integrate New Orleans public schools on November 14, 1960, as they reflect on their experiences and the unfinished journey toward justice in education.
Taking place 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, the evening will reflect on the storm’s profound and lasting impact on public education in New Orleans, as well as the city’s resilience through its disruption, devastation, and transformation. We will explore the intersection of history and present-day challenges, including the mounting threats to education as a civil right, and local leaders will share their stories and insights on what New Orleans can teach us about resistance, recovery, and a path forward for education across the South.
Wednesday, Nov. 5
9:45 – 10:45 a.m.
Welcome & Opening Remarks
9:45 – 10:45 a.m.
Plenary Session – What Desegregation Means Today: How Can School Desegregation Meaningfully Advance Education Opportunity in 2025 and Beyond?
The right to an education and the ability of the U.S. education system to bring opportunity for success to all students, are ideas that have inspired educators and educational leaders for hundreds of years. However, for many reasons, our education system has not fully operated to bring opportunities for success to the entire population of students attending our public schools. Decades of lawful racial segregation in public education is, in large part, responsible for our inability to extend equal education opportunities to all student populations. Decades of resistance to desegregation along with disruptive education politics, also have given long life to education inequality.
Speaker information coming soon!
11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Break Out Sessions
1 – 2 p.m.
Plenary Session – The Southern Landscape of Postsecondary Opportunity – Where Do We Go From Here
Across the South, the promise of higher education as a pathway to opportunity remains out of reach for too many students. Rising costs, shrinking financial aid, and reduced student supports make it harder to enroll and stay on track. At the same time, students must navigate a patchwork of community colleges, four-year universities, and workforce programs that do not receive equal support or recognition—widening gaps in who gets in, who persists, and who completes a degree or credential. This session will explore what it takes to better leverage the entire postsecondary system to connect more students, especially those historically underserved, to meaningful access, completion, and postsecondary success.
Speaker information coming soon!
2:15 – 3:30 p.m.
Break Out Sessions
3:45 – 4:45 p.m.
Break Out Sessions
5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Networking Reception
Thursday, Nov. 6
9 a.m. – 10 a.m.
Plenary Session – Making It Work: Financing Equal Access in a Fragmented Early Childhood System
The U.S. early childhood system remains fractured—defined by uneven access, inconsistent funding, and unclear governance. Yet despite this disorganization, families and early care educators can excel despite the lack of adequate and coordinated investments to develop the minds of the future. This session will unpack the roots of early care funding fragmentation and the historical financing structures that have shaped today’s inequities and elevate solutions that result in pay parity for early care professionals. Panelists will also share strategies to advance more equitable, transparent, and sustainable approaches to ECE funding.
Speaker information coming soon!
10:15 – 11:30 a.m.
Breakout Sessions
12 – 1 p.m.
Breakout Sessions
1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Plenary Session – 20 Years After Katrina: Lessons Learned from Navigating Educational Interruptions and Calamities
In the last two decades, we have seen multiple disasters work to derail public education. Twenty years out from the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, what have we learned? What do we know about current outcomes for Katrina’s survivors, particularly the children who were affected? What does this tell us about actionable strategies for addressing other educational crises?
Today, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the midst of a political attack on truth in education, we continue to face crises in education. How do we build learning systems that can bend but not break in the face of disaster? We know that inadequate and inequitable responses to disasters highlight and heighten systemic injustices, but what have we learned that is actionable from the successes and failures of our responses and their outcomes that can change what we know moving forward?
Speaker information coming soon!
2:30 – 3 p.m.
Closing Remarks