Voices of the Dropout Nation: August in Quotes

“[The] shame of success has pervaded America’s educational culture for far too long. I’ve heard it repeatedly from low-income and minority students who are picked-on and ridiculed because they want to do their best in school. It saddens me to hear the same sentiment expressed by someone who should be a model for her students and peers. — U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan arguing why we need value-added evaluations of teacher performance — and why reports such as those by the Los Angeles Times are doing what education traditionalists and some reformers aren’t willing to do.

“The gender gap is larger in the Black community than in others. There are deep historical reasons for this and they do not lie in the Black community  it is part of what Gunnar Myrdal called the “American Dilemma.” Racism in America has always been “gendered.”… When Black males are educated to world class standards we can be pretty sure that all American children will have that opportunity.” — Schott Foundation research  czar Michael Holzman, author of the Yes We Can report, in response to Richard Whitmire at his Why Boys Fail blog.

“[Although] the number has remained roughly consistent over time, about 4 in 10 public school parents say they’d change schools if they could.  From a pure loyalty and market share perspective that should be a troubling number for the public school establishment but instead they take comfort from the 60 percent.” –Eduwonk‘s Andy Rotherham responding to the latest Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll on political support for public education.

Listen tomorrow for the Dropout Nation Podcast, which will focus on how to reform failing suburban districts such as the mostly-black Roosevelt district in New York (now under state control).

Watch: The Providence Effect on Reforming Public Education

When it comes to educating poor, urban children, far too many consider it impossible to do without solving all the surrounding issues within a community. Essentially, those folks — especially defenders of traditional public school practices that promote educational malpractice — simply give up on our poorest children. But as seen in the success of some traditional public schools, Catholic diocesan school systems and charter schools run by Harlem Children’s Zone and the Knowledge is Power Program, high-quality schools with highly-effective teachers, rigorous curricula, strong leadership and high expectations can help every child succeed.

One such school is Chicago’s Providence-St. Mel, a former Catholic school that was taken over by a group of parents after it was targeted for shutdown by the Second City’s archdiocese in 1979. Since that threat, Providence-St. Mel has made it its mission to get every one of its students ready for college and life. Watch this trailer from the documentary profiling the school, The Providence Effect, and consider how we can expand the number of high-quality schools in every community. It will take the reform of American public education — and even redefining it to mean a system of funding the best educational options, public or private, for every child — to stem the dropout crisis that leaves 1.3 million kids trapped in despair.