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Politics & Government

A Breakfast of Power and Purpose

The promise to improve education outcomes for black children

Yesterday, I attended a legislative breakfast hosted by the Adelaide L. Sanford Institute (ASI) and co sponsered by the United Way of New York City and the Children's Defense Fund - New York.  The event was held here in Bedford-Stuyvesant at the historic , the same church where announced her run for the Presidency of the United States.

The purpose of this breakfast was to discuss ASI’s position paper and recommendations to close the achievement gap and improve academic outcomes for African-American students. 

In attendance were prominent elected officials and leaders from city state and federal government, including the likes of New York State Commissioner of Education John B. King, New York City Councilman Charles Barron, Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, NYC Comptroller John Liu, New York State Senator John Sampson, Assemblyman Karim Camara, Congresswoman Yvette Clark, Congressman Ed Towns, and at-large member of the NYS Board of Regents Dr. Lester Young. Members of the clergy, educators, community based organization leaders and parents also were present.    

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Now I have participated in many meetings and discussions focused on education policy and its impact on black students, but I have never been in a discussion where so many of the participants held positions that would allow them to move an agenda forward in a really impactful way.  

The position paper introduced by ASI begins with an endorsement of the New York State education reform agenda and the adoption of the four pillars of reform: “(1) intentionally benchmarked standards . . . (2) the development of robust data systems . . . (3) . . . recruiting, developing, retaining and rewarding of effective teachers and principals as well as including student performance measures in their evaluation; and (4) turning around our lowest performing schools . . .”

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The paper goes on to identify four areas of focus that should occur within the context of this reform agenda and provides recommendations for these areas:

1.      Ensuring access to early childhood learning – access to early learning programs must be expanded and improved.  They believe that programs should be full day and extended until 6:00 PM.  They also recommend that the compulsory age of education in New York State be reduced to 5 years old. 

2.      Designing and implementing culturally sensitive student support systems -  supports would include extended day, week and year initiatives for students and creating safe and nurturing spaces for positive youth development and violence prevention.   

3.      Identifying schools in need of special assistance and support before they become low performing – recommendations include: evaluating the current school support structures (especially school networks and support organizations) to determine their impact on high needs schools, re-establish the Chancellor’s district (a special school district that was created prior to Bloomberg’s administration, to provide additional support and funding to schools in need of improvement. 

4.      Guaranteeing the inclusion of African American history and culture in pedagogical practices.  – ASI is seeking the immediate implementation of the enacted New York state Legislation which established the Amistad Commission a state level commission which is responsible for researching the extent to which the African Slave trade and Slavery in America is included in the curricula of New York State schools. 

Although ASI’s recommendations cover some politically charged territory such as teacher evaluations and the mandatory inclusion of African-American history in school curriculum, their agenda for the most part, consists of researched based practices that are widely accepted by educators as effective ways of significantly improving schools and outcomes for black students. 

Some of the recommendations, like reducing the compulsory education age to 5 and providing high needs communities with expanded access to full day Pre-K, require significantly increased education spending at a time of austere budgets in every level of government. 

Of course anytime there is public policy recommendation that requires increased spending, the question of political will immediately arises. However this question should be put to rest since during this meeting Reverend Dr. Gary V. Simpson, the Senior Pastor of Concord Baptist Church asked for everyone who pledged to support the recommendations made by ASI to stand and make a public commitment to move this agenda forward. 

Everyone who was able to stand, stood. This included Commissioner King, Comptroller Liu and all of the other elected officials present making their commitment to this agenda a matter of public record.

Right now, there is a unique alignment of power and resources that have never existed previously in our history. We have a black President of the United States, a black Commissioner of the NYS Education Department, a black Chancellor of New York City’s public schools, black membership on the NYS Board of Regents, a host of black elected officials at every level of government as well as more black principals and educators than at any other time in history. 

If we are unable to drastically alter the trajectory of public education for our children now, even with the unprecedented number of black people in positions of power and influence, then it is likely that the changes we so desperately need will never occur. 

I hope that everyone who was in that room yesterday intends to keep their promises. 

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