Here it is -- it is 8 double space pages. I enjoyed putting it together.

Afterword

"From 'just a teacher' to justice in teaching: working in the service of education: the new civil right"

 

Writing an Afterword based on the excellence between the covers of this "Handbook" is a daunting task.  The challenge is taking the extensive research and rich programmatic threads among the pages, binding and then sustaining implementation.   Hopefully erecting a bridge across theory, practice and implementation -- leading to what Gladwell has called "The Tipping Point," for the benefit of all of America's schoolchildren and youth.  In particular for those students challenged by poverty whom we have called "school dependent," i.e., because of family challenges such as poverty, these students are solely dependent on the schools for successful learning and achievement.  These students must rely on the hearts, minds and hands of educators.  They must rely on the educator to avoid the blaming of the victim by recognizing that both the individual and the institutions called schools, are responsible for improving the life trajectories of America's young.  Not mutually exclusive, but two sides of the same coin if you will.

 

The words in this volume speak of a renewed belief, of hope, of determination and confidence.  As Walt Whitman has written: "One word can pour such a flood through the soul."  So must the reader of this volume come to embrace the words offered by the writers, and when extended to the context of one's work and mission, frames in those words and actions, the foundation of the American democracy – an educated and informed citizenry.

 

It has been written elsewhere that teachers are uniquely positioned to become the advocates and activists which students in urban, suburban and rural communities need.  Teachers and principals, for the most part, are trusted by the students and parents.  Armed with the knowledge, the strategies, broad and specific as they are, which accelerates learning in the classroom, creates connections between the school and home, erects partnerships between businesses, universities, policy-makers and politicians, and will lead to sustained education reform, while improving and repairing shattered lives.  And though education may not be guaranteed by America's Constitution, it is often mentioned as a civil right, and as Jean Anyon writes in "radical possibilities: public policy, urban education, and a new social movement:" "can be located ideologically in the long and powerful tradition of [the American] civil rights [movement]." 

 

There was a long period of time during the 20th century that many influential African-American leaders embraced the ideas of W.E. Dubois, where he called for educating the upper 10% of black Americans.  By so doing it was felt that these students would lead and bring others along with them.  Sadly this has not happened.  Students in urban school communities are dropping out at unprecedented rates – ranging from 40% to 70% in many cities and localities.  Among African and Hispanic Americans, upwards to 30 percent of men who do not graduate from high school are in prison.  Approximately 70 percent of black American children are born to unwed mothers.  The data is frightening, especially in the light that America will soon be projected by the Census Bureau a majority-minority country by 2042.  How will we be able to remain competitive if we don't learn to educate all Americans in a manner that enables them to enter an institution of higher education if they so chose?

 

Education in America – the kind that is equitable, fulfilling and meaningful – is in short supply in the nation.  The reasons are legion; the results well-documented; the real ravages largely ignored.  Despite this, the imperative remains: America's schoolchildren – all of them – deserve powerful classrooms, swirling with powerful ideas, orchestrated by powerful and empowered teachers and supported by dynamic home-school partnerships as well as community stakeholders. 

 

The work in this Handbook involves improving classroom instruction, developing strategic interventions and policies, improving schooling through professional development based on a solid foundation of cognitive, socio-cultural and linguistic research and theories, as well as working to engage communities in conversations that enable common ground to be found among parents, teachers, stakeholders and university leaders, so that the future of America is built on hope, not despair.

 

It is popular today to declare that education policy should be "data driven."  In writing the "Afterword," I hold that policy should be driven by values and by vision, informed by data.  For example, the policy that America "doesn't give up on people" isn't data driven; it's a statement of values.  Policy should begin with values that are formed into a vision of how the world should be.  Data should inform the development of policy that guides action, and plans to carry out the policy.  Data must inform the "how" of our plans; values must shape the substance of our vision and our mission to make that vision real.  Beliefs unite values and information. 

 

It is quite obvious that every writer in this volume believes that virtually no child, including no black or brown child, is so compromised by his or her family or community circumstances that he or she cannot be successful in school.  I say "virtually" because there are some children who have conditions that impair their ability to fulfill this goal, but they are fewer than are institutionally classified in this way.  Here, I am writing about the vast majority of our children.

 

As you poured through and labored with the writings, research and program applications, one struggles to blend the influence of our left brain with that of the right -- understanding through neuroscience that the left sees the trees and the right the forest.  This is the challenge of reading, internalizing and applying a volume such as the one you may have skimmed, perused or are in the process of completing.  Working through the millions of data sets the brain takes in over the course of a minute, while understanding that only 2% of the millions of concepts are processed consciously.  As George Miller taught us years ago, the challenge of the brain is not storage but retrieval.  So it will be for you as it has been for me in reading this Handbook.

 

How do we begin to chunk the information in ways that lead to real-world applications, while answering the challenge that educators face?  The task is broad and the challenge of taking each suggestion from each chapter to scale is daunting.  And yet, as educators, we are approximately 3.5 million strong – the same number as those who have honored America by joining the armed services.  In essence, we represent an army of Americans, capable, if we join through coherent application, the numbers that truly can change the world.  This will mean however, that we learn, practice and extend the research on the pages herein.  This will mean that we recognize  teachers are for many students, their last great hope.  This means that we understand that the single most important in-school factor in terms of student achievement is the teacher.  So given our numbers and the moral high ground where we work, why aren't successes far more widespread?

 

A key to the question raised is the will to do the right thing.  The oft-cited statement of Ronald Edmonds offers one perspective on this fundamental question, In the book "Young, Gifted and Black (Perry, Steele, & Hilliard, 2003), the late and sorely missed Asa Hilliard, III, a professor at George State University and long-time friend of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA), quoted Ronald Edmonds, who stated, "We can, whenever and wherever we wish, teach successfully all children whose education is of interest to us.  Whether we do or do not do it depends in the final analysis on how we feel about the fact that we have not done so thus far."  Edmonds often stressed that, in my words, the existence of one's success is proof that success can be achieved in all similar circumstances.  He was asserting that the nation, the states, school districts, schools, educators – and those at home and in the community – lack the will to bring the achievement distribution of black, brown and children struggling with poverty in line with the achievement distribution of White middle and upper class students. 

 

Many years after the "Brown" decision, we all must recognize that not only are there no separate but equal tables, ultimately there are no separate tables at all.  The education of all children is "of interest" to all of us in the general sense that all in the American economy, policy, and society have a state – an interest – in all children growing into contributing members of those elements of America.  To be indifferent to this is shortsighted, wasteful, and wrong in a society – one still shedding the burdens of pernicious practices and suffering the strains of private prejudices (from   all directions) – that is the keeper of the American dream help up by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.  We need to hold his dream both in our dreams and in our waking hours.  The need to close the gap that exists between the actual achievement and potential of the learner is great, national and urgent.  It is also personal and practical.  This is what I internalized in reading all the pages of this volume. 

 

The shift of demographics in America to so-called minority-majority, as with school enrollments in which non-White students are the majority, should not give false comfort that power or success will follow.  In our world, many growing economies and political systems are non-White, but they control their own infrastructures.  We need look no farther than the "Asian tiger" economies such as India and China, much of Latin America, or the Middle East.  And although the proportion of U.S. population that is African American is not rising about the 12% to 13% range held for some time, it is referenced in one chapter that one out of 4 American children under the age of six is Hispanic.

 

Given the realities of family circumstances in America – more families with two wage earners, high proportions of Hispanic and African American children  living with one parent, relative or caregiver – and an acknowledgment that many African and Hispanic American children are "school dependent" for their learning of basic as well as advanced subject matter, skills, and behaviors that advantageous in the world, does not shield families and communities from challenges to do more and to do better by our children.  The world economy is changing rapidly, and those behind or beneath the curve of those changes will just lose more ground, unless we act on the genius that is America – our ability to absorb all citizens on "common ground" and toward the "common good."

 

Educators and leaders must believe in the potential of their students – all their students – to achieve at levels that will advance them to the next school grade, that will tackle postsecondary education or a job that will require postsecondary literacy and critical thinking – this belief should apply to students whether they desire to be an auto mechanic or a technology engineer.  Educators must believe in their ability to engage and educate their students, and educators must believe in their ability to gain the professional knowledge and skills to do so.  This is the purpose of this Handbook.  It is written to convey a knowledge base that can lift the achievement of all students.  It is crafted so that the knowledge translates to a variety of classroom, school and community circumstances. 

 

Armed with this knowledge and applied coherently across schools, throughout districts, communities must believe in the ability and willingness of their school eductors to engage and educate all the students.  This hope I write here is a bridge between belief and action.  We are sustained not by taking cover when times are hard or challenges great, but by taking courage from both historical figures of our struggles and also from the innocent yet strong hopes of our children.  Hope however is not a strategy that sustains, hope begets strategy.  Determination is the express of belief and hope in action, and confidence must be rooted in educator competence and high expectations for all students.

 

This then is our challenge.  All those who read this book, all those who share the knowledge with their colleagues, must come to embrace a comprehensive, cohesive and coordinated effort that engages the many parts of a school, of a school system, and of the surrounding social/political/economic system.  Moving as described by one writer as from novice to expert; embracing a voice of advocacy through the expert positions that enable rather than disable the learner, implementing instructional, administrative and organizational arrangements that best guide and nurture both student and teacher alike, and finally seeking the "uncommon common ground" where one group or individual is not pitted against another.  Where as the African proverb puts it so well: "If you want to go quickly go alone, but if you want to go further go together." 

 

 

This then is our challenge.  The research base is clear and focused.  The landscape has been cleared sufficiently to recognize that teaching is that center of the combination of policies, programs, practices, and beliefs that lifts and accelerates student achievement.  Educators are the professionals who craft and deliver that teaching.  Their professional skills and professional behavior, their beliefs that undergird and guide that behavior are targeted and tuned by professional development activities, before and during their service.  Because most of the teachers who will be in classrooms over the coming 15 to 20 years are already teaching, in-service professional development delivered by universities, agencies and membership groups has a great mission and is the binding agent for most reforms. 

 

It is a truism that learning occurs one person at a time, for learning is within each of us.  And school change takes place one classroom at a time, for our schools are organized so that the primary "unit of production" is the classroom.  And teaching only improves one teacher at a time, for no public policy, outrage, or outcry can force teachers to do what they will not do, certainly not for as long as it will take for their student to overcome external deficiencies, to gather external supports, and to build internal strengths.  Thus, progress must occur one teacher, one classroom, one student at a time.  Yet there is nothing in this formulation or in nature that denies that this can take place simultaneously with many places and people.  This combination of efforts is demanding, but it is doable and long overdue.  The formulations in this Handbook provide the markers and beacons that enable coherent and sustained education reform.  Si se puede!

 

Eric J. Cooper is president and founder of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education.

He can be reached at www.nuatc.org.

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