An Urgent Appeal: Summary Report and 20/20 Action Plan

Posted on December 10, 2008

Last week, The New York City Leadership Center published the Summary Report and Action Plan of the “Leadership Conversation: An Urgent Appeal to Engage a Generation at Risk” event that coincided with the launch of 20/20 Vision for Schools on September 18. 20/20 Vision co-founder Jeremy Del Rio co-authored the report with Beverly Cook of NYCLC.

Here’s an excerpt:

If the moral test of a society is how it treats its children, America has failed the same test year after year after year for decades, specifically its failure to educate the urban poor despite promising equal access to quality education for all.

In his greetings to Forum participants, Newark Mayor Cory Booker described this shortcoming as, “the only poverty in this world that challenges us.” That poverty, he said, is “not material poverty, but a poverty of faith, a poverty of imagination, a poverty of love and compassion, a poverty of action.” …

In return for decades of unfulfilled promises, we have reaped generations of unfulfilled promise. Despite spending more money per capita for education than any other country in the industrialized world, the United States ranks eighteenth in the world in graduation rates, and first in incarceration. U.S. policymakers prepare for the worst by allocating prison construction budgets based on fourth grade reading scores.

When the average high school graduate from a low-income urban community reads at an eighth grade level; when fewer than 30% of urban high school students actually graduate in some American cities; when New York City, the nation’s model urban school district, graduated only 44% of eligible students on-time in 2008, the same year that it received the country’s highest prize for education reform; it feels a little too late to exclaim, “It’s time for change!”

… Together, they concluded that America’s crisis in schools is first and foremost a crisis in leadership. A systematic refusal to accept accountability for chronic underperformance has permitted decades of institutional failure, which has placed current and future generations at risk of social unrest and decay. Comprehensive reform requires multi-sector, collaborative strategies led by men and women willing to commit, as Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone says, “to fix this problem … to put politics aside and do what’s right for America’s children.”

… To that end, the NYCLC and 20/20 urge multi-sector leaders to open source a collaborative effort to transform education in America. If education is first and foremost about children, education reform should not be a proprietary pursuit. Since the problems are too vast for one person, interest group, or community to overcome on its own, open sourcing ideas, best practices, funding solutions, evaluation methodologies, and reform strategies represents the best way to engage the best minds in transforming public education in this country. If it’s “about the kids,” we need to model how to share.

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» Filed Under action plan, nyclc

Comments

One Response to “An Urgent Appeal: Summary Report and 20/20 Action Plan”

  1. Venus Ketcham on March 26th, 2009 10:03 am

    This is wonderful, and I have a few ideas. First, coming from Queens, let’s have every church in Queens praying for a school. Let’s have churches that are praying for the same schools, maybe pray on the same day, at the same time. Powerful, serious, outlined prayer. Maybe distribute a prayer format with specific aspects of education that need to be prayed up. Ex.: Adminstration, budget, PTA, after-school programs, test scores, attendance, the crossing guard, etc. Intentional pray. Then my next idea would be “Gifts from Above”, care packages sent from a church to a school. Breakfast for staff, free gospel concert, 6-week vocal lessons, 8-week liturgical dance workshop etc. Have many more ideas to discuss at a later date.
    Thank You,
    Venus Ketcham