Rudy Crew, President
Education is ‘civil-rights issue of our generation,’ Cabinet official tells NAACP
By Mará Rose Williams — The Kansas City Star
Posted on Wednesday , July 14, 2010
Calling education “the civil rights issue of our generation,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday issued a national challenge for whole communities to get involved in improving public education.
“The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve it in the classroom,” Duncan told NAACP delegates meeting in Kansas City for the group’s annual convention.
“This is not just a moral obligation; it is our economic imperative,” he said. “Everyone has a responsibility. Everyone can step up. Education is our national mission. Education is our best hope.”
He said community leaders “must be at the table when decisions are made about how to improve struggling schools.”
The Obama administration is making $4 billion available to improve the worst-performing 5 percent of schools in the country, Duncan said.
“But what our resources cannot buy is courage,” he said.
Rudy Crew, professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California and president of Global Partnership Schools, said struggling schools can’t be corrected with money alone.
“If people don’t know what to do with the money they already have, I don’t know what they are going to do with the money they are going to get,” said Crew, who addressed the audience after Duncan.
Duncan asked the NAACP to put education equity at the core of its national agenda. He called on group members to uncover bad schools and weed them out; to challenge districts to lengthen the school day; to demand funding equity among schools; and to make schools “stop lying to children and parents” about being ready for college when the truth is “we haven’t prepared them.”
To spurts of applause from his audience, Duncan said the solution starts at home. He challenged parents to turn off TVs and video games and make children read.
He said knowing that minority children trail white children academically is not enough. Instead, he said, the country must stop making excuses and address the problem.
He urged districts to do whatever is necessary to keep students from dropping out.
“If having students wearing a suit and tie will effect a change, then you should do that,” he said. “If having parents sign a contract to get involved in the school will effect a change, you should do that.”
