Bringing Equity to the Education System

Today I joined with New York City Schools' chancellor Joel Klein, the Rev. Al Sharpton and a host of other civil rights leaders, elected officials, and education reformers to announce the launch of the Education Equality Project. The new project will challenge politicians, public officials, educations, union leaders, and others to view fixing public schools as the foremost civil rights issue of the early 21st century.

Too often many minority students still do not receive equal or adequate educational opportunities. For example, only about half of the nation’s black and Latino students graduate on time from high school and just one out of ten black eighth graders reads at a proficient level. Additionally, only half have been taught to read at even the most basic level.  By the time they near graduation, black and Latino teenagers have math and reading skills that are no higher than those of white middle school students.

Moreover, minority students are far less likely to attend schools with high expectations and effective teachers. One study found that almost 5 million of the nation’s Latino students attend schools in states that have set proficiency standards in fourth grade reading so low that they fall below even the most basic level on a national assessment

Our nation’s economy and individual family income is tied to improving our skills through education. Americans cannot afford to sit back and watch its schools fail our students. We need to raise expectations and opportunities for every single student, regardless of race, color, creed or income. We need strong leaders to take the initiative and we need this issue to be on the minds of every voter in November.

Comments

[Rev. Mike]

Governor Romer, I live in Charlotte, NC. We have spent nearly a billion and a half dollars renovating schools in the inner city over roughly the past ten years. We have programs that are focused on providing opportunities and raising expectations as you've described. We're now going through the throes of moving administrators (teachers will undoubtedly soon follow), voluntarily at the present time, from schools where they have been effective on the premise that they can likewise be effective in challenged schools. Involuntary transfers will probably follow at some point.

In short, parents like me are asked to accept what is left over and give up what we have in order that someone else might have a better shot. Well enough, except that what we have done to date has not made much difference, certainly not enough to mitigate arguments against such redistributions of resources. At what point do you think we begin to address other factors besides resource allocation?

[Leonie Haimson]

David Cantor of the DOE press office says that the Broad and Gates foundations are not funding the Klein/Sharpton Education Equity campaign, but that an "anonymous" donor is. Do you think its appropriate for a public campaign that attempts to influence the next President of the United States should lack transparency about who is backing it financially?