Finding Our Way Back to First: Reclaiming World Leadership in education
Posted by on January 14, 2013
Finding Our Way Back to First: Reclaiming World Leadership by Educating All America’s Children
Our Challenge
In the last century, our nation expanded access to school for poor and minority children. The NAACP’s leadership and advocacy around the Brown v. Board of Education case opened the possibilities for a more equitable, exemplary education system for all. We were able to lead by educating about one in four of our students well enough for them to attend—if not finish—college. In a knowledge-based economy, however, excluding three fourths of our students from higher education is no longer acceptable. The time for tinkering and small-scale experimentation is over.
President Obama has challenged America to lead the world in the number of college graduates we prepare, just as we used to lead the world in the number of high school graduates we prepared. To foster such widespread achievement for the majority of our children will require rapidly accelerating learning among the same students for whom we just recently won access to mainstream education. We can achieve our goal only if we make real for all students the opportunities we have historically offered to just a few.
In Finding Our Way Back to First, the research informed prescriptions for investing in the untapped portion of our student potential are a roadmap to accelerated achievement. To meet the 21st century’s challenges, we must create and provide for students who have been left behind the conditions that all students need for success. That effort means making sure that all students have a strong foundation before kindergarten, are taught by effective teachers and leaders, have access to more time for more learning, and benefit from
wisely targeted resources.
The time for doing for just a few kids what we know is right for all kids is over. Finding our way back to
first will mean aggressively extending these achievement-boosting reforms to every student and school in the nation.
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