NBC News hosted it’s third annual “Education Nation” summit earlier this week — held at the always-inspiring New York Public Library in midtown Manhattan. Interviews with President Obama and Gov. Romney naturally got a lot of the attention, but several of the panels (which had a “solutions” focus this year) where great. They’re all available on replay online, but I’ve posted a few of the highlights here.

Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams moderated a fascinating discussion about “grit” and the “growth mindset,” topics that are getting a lot of attention these days thanks to research by Carol Dweck of Stanford and Angela Duckworth of UPenn, and a recent book by Paul Tough called How Children Succeed.

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Our own Margery Mayer, president of Scholastic Education, joined a panel on Early Literacy that echoed a theme heard many times throughout the summit — that getting early childhood education right is so important to ensuring student success in school. Kids who do not read well by third grade are FOUR times more likely to become dropouts, so ensuring all kids have access to quality PreK and full-day Kindergarten is a must. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro said if he could focus on one thing in eduction it would be early childhood.

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Finally, the Teacher Town Hall. Always an important and spirited event at Education Nation summits, it gave teachers a platform to weigh in on issues in education — from teacher evaluation to standardized tests to Common Core.

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