Sarah Sparks captures some of the highlights from Wednesday's Silent Epidemic Summit hosted in DC by the folks at Gates, Time Magazine, and MTV here, but I'll go ahead and add some observations as well (as promised).

First of all, the most highly referenced moment that took place during the course of the event (I guess I could have written that more simply as, the 'most talked-about thing that happened') was the discussion among current students and recent high school dropouts about their motivations, ideas for change, and thoughts on high school reform in general. Jynell Harrison, the winner of MTV's Be The Voice Contest, gave a rousing opening speech in which she talked about the critical need for high schools where there are more teachers and counselors who establish genuine, quality connections with the students; more challenging classes; and higher expectations. Lyle Oates, a high school student in Boston, MA who had dropped out of school to sell drugs before going back to a charter school called YouthBuild where he rededicated himself to education, talked about the importance of a shared community of success and caring in high school, where kids don't drop out because they actually feel like their peers and teachers are in it together for the same purposes.

The rest of the conference was full of research experts, local and state politicians, activists and philanthropists, and even federal representatives in First Lady Laura Bush and US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, each of whom put their own unique spin on the dropout problem. It was an urgent feel in the room, if also a predictable one; no one questioned the need to make progress in increasing high school completion rates, but debates between business representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and teacher union leaders like Reg Weaver were straight out of the book.

For Our Education's part, we did get a chance to ask Secretary Spellings a question that she artfully dodged. The question was, "Given that she and the other summit speakers were quick to cite the stories told earlier in the day by Jynell and Lyle as critical factors and valuable insight into how to address the dropout problem, would she and the US Department of Education consider creating a permanent, structural role for actual students to help inform the discussion and decisions made in Washington, DC about issues facing their schools?" Her answer was, in sum, "that is a very interesting idea."

The title of this post is, 28 Weeks Later. It's not a shameless plug for a even more shameless horror movie, but rather an allusion to a critical time frame in which the impact of Wednesday's summit will be measured. 28 weeks later, will anyone have done anything differently because this week's summit on the Silent Epidemic? Will you? The speakers at the event struggled to provide clear and easy ways for people to take action for change, other than through the new Gates / Broad funded Ed in '08 campaign, an ambitious and worthy undertaking. Hopefully that, and the current work in the field, will be enough to spark movement between now and the start of 2008.