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WHAT DID YOU DO ON YOUR SUMMER VACATION?
Executive Director Becky Crowe Hill shares her reflections
on the Aspen Institute, educational entrepreneurship and school
reform as a means to achieve racial justice
As our students head back to school, I thought it
would be a great time to write my own version of "What did you
do on your summer vacation?" This summer I had the privilege of
spending ten days at the Aspen Institute. I spent the first few
days with a group of education entrepreneurs convened by the New
Schools Venture Fund and the second week with the Aspen Roundtable
on Community Change focused on racial justice as it impacts our
youth. The combination of the two sessions led to some deep reflection
on the work we're doing at PartnersSI as part of a larger social
movement to transform the quality of the public education system
for low-income students of color.
The time with fellow education entrepreneurs hosted
by the New Schools Venture Fund focused on education policy and
research and development that support transforming public schooling.
My colleagues and I worked to link our various strengths into
a whole that has the potential to be much greater than our individual
organizational efforts. Whether it was through conversations about
how to combine outstanding principal and teacher preparation programs
with PartnersSI's approach to dramatic school improvement or ways
to make the diagnostic reading assessment process more efficient
for teachers in our classrooms, the value of the collective conversation
was unparalleled.
The second week with the Aspen Institute Roundtable
on Community Change brought together twenty-one of us: groups
of three from seven different regions or cities such as the Bay
Area, New Orleans, Kansas City, New York, and Chicago. Each group
was comprised of individuals playing leadership roles that significantly
impact racial justice within different sectors --philanthropy,
nonprofit, public housing, city government, arts and culture,
etc. The African American Policy Forum and the Roundtable led
the week jointly. We engaged in a rigorous seminar delving into
the legal, political and social history of racism and racial inequities
in the U.S. with the goal of deepening our knowledge and ability
to articulate our respective organization's work within the broader
context of structural racism in this country. The week culminated
in working with our city groups to plan how to implement a broader
racial justice agenda in our communities.
As we look at our communities, we see structural
racism playing out on every indicator that impacts the health
of our communities. Structural racism is a term used to describe
the ways in which history, ideology, public policies, institutional
practices and culture interact to maintain a racial hierarchy
that allows privileges associated with whiteness and the disadvantages
associated with color to endure and adapt over time (Aspen Institute
Roundtable on Community Change). In healthcare, we see disparities
in the life expectancy of African Americans versus white Americans.
Even when holding educational degrees constant we see income disparities
by race, where African Americans make 80% of the salary of their
white counterparts, and Latinos, 66%. We also know that the criminal
justice system is comprised of nearly 50% African Americans, while
African Americans make up 12% of the overall population. The structural
racism framework helps to articulate the connections among these
outcomes and the role of a system of advantage that favors being
white in this country in everything from education to home ownership,
political representation, accumulation of wealth, and of course,
education. The structural racism framework is an important analytic
lens that helps us understand that the inequities we experience
in this country go beyond socioeconomic status. If our solutions
solely address poverty without considering the history of race
and racism, our solutions will be incomplete. For more on the
structural racism framework, please see the Aspen Institute's
work here.
This perspective on racism and racial justice is
essential to remind us of the broader purpose of our work at PartnersSI:
that is, to provide dramatically different educational opportunities
for African American and Latino students, and other students of
color who have not been served well by our public education system.
Our work is about improving the quality of teaching that children
experience everyday in the classroom, improving leadership and
helping districts to focus their resources on supporting the systems
that make great teaching and leadership possible.
Our education system is a microcosm of our broader
society's disinvestment in African American and Latino students
and the communities where they live. Students in our schools are
statistically more likely to have underprepared teachers and inadequate
facilities for learning, less likely to have basic resources such
as satisfactory reading materials, and less likely to have access
to rigorous classes such as Advanced Placement courses.
In the broader context of our work, improving literacy
rates is the first step in a chain of investments necessary to
ensure that children have the skills and motivation to realize
their potential. Our work is not just about enabling more students
to learn to read, it's literally about transforming our communities.
Right now, if you're a white student in one of our districts,
you have about a 75% chance of going into middle school reading
well enough to be able to tackle the demands of the literature,
science and social studies courses that you take. If you're Black
or Latino, or learning English as your second language, you have
about a 25% chance of leaving elementary school prepared for the
demands of secondary schooling. And students who leave elementary
school without basic literacy skills have a life path that is
defined by this fact. In the best case, it means remedial reading
classes in middle school and high school. In the worst case, it
means dropping out. Students who aren't finding success in school
subsequently find other pulls away from school that, at least
in the near term, are more attractive. But in today's information-driven
economy, a bachelor's degree is the functional equivalent of a
high school degree fifty years ago. A bachelor's degree also commands
salaries double a high school diploma, amounting to a million
dollar difference over a lifetime of work. In addition to increasing
earning potential, advanced literacy skills are necessary for
each of us to express ourselves, command respect, and spark change
in our communities.
I wouldn't have been able to write this were it
not for some phenomenal public school teachers whom I had the
privilege of experiencing over my educational career. Education
broadly, and literacy, specifically, is a lever not only for personal
advancement, but for broader social change. Education truly can
level the playing field, but not if we believe that the education
system as it currently exists offers a level playing field. And
not if we think about it in isolation from the other essential
reforms that need to take place to provide equitable housing,
health care, nutrition, work opportunities, and safety to our
students and communities. The Aspen Roundtable on Community Change
not only reinforced the urgency of our work, but it also reminded
me how critical it is that we find a way to connect more broadly
with other change agents, be they in the private, government or
nonprofit sector, to move a broader agenda for racial justice
forward.
I believe that operating from the broader perspective
of social justice, while maintaining a laser-like focus on the
levers that we're impacting through our work at PartnersSI is
critical to our success and impact, both within our schools and
in the broader community. My time in Aspen provided not only the
forum to develop ideas, but also the inspiration and courage to
create a public education system that eradicates the injustice
of the past.
Articles in this issue (Fall 2008):
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