Grandeur commence avant école primaire

Black Leaders on Education: How the NAACP’s president proposes closing the racial gap in education.

• Par: Benjamin Todd Jealous | Posted: Janvier 16, 2013 à 12:07 AM

Special to The Root) — Continuing their historical practice of working together to address issues of concern to the African-American community, the NAACP, National Urban League, United Negro College Fund and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are working cooperatively to improve educational opportunities for all students. This week we will run op-eds by the leaders of each organization that address a crucial aspect of what it will take to prepare our young people to succeed in life. First up: The president of the NAACP addresses early-childhood education.

This month we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which set our nation on the path to the end of slavery.

Upon receiving their freedom, nos ancêtres’ first priority was to get an education for themselves and their children. In Georgia it was illegal for slaves to read, yet schools for slaves and freedmen had been operating in secret for years. When teachers publicly opened their classroom doors in 1865, they were met with an overflow of students. With scarce federal support but a true understanding of the value of education, they built dozens of schools using their own resources and their bare hands.

My grandmother is 96. Her grandfather was a slave until the end of the Civil War. She was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in Virginia that he helped build, and at a college he helped found.

Dans 2013, the Year of the Black Student, our desire for generational progress is as urgent as ever. As parents, we still demand that our children have better opportunities than we did. And we are still willing to sacrifice to make that a reality.

Yet our children are growing up in states that spend more and more on prisons et less and less on public higher education. They grow up in a nation that leads the world in incarceration but can no longer claim to lead it in job creation.

If we are going to deliver on our ambitions, we must do what our ancestors did: build a better America for our children with our own hands. We will need two things: un plan d'action collectif et un engagement individuel de faire ce que nous devons faire en sorte que nos enfants obtiennent ce dont ils ont besoin pour réussir.

Un nouveau plan d'action de la NAACP, “Finding Our Way Back de Première,” établit à responsabiliser les communautés à ce plan.

L'une des principales conclusions du rapport est que commence le chemin de notre nation à la grandeur de nos enfants et bien avant la maternelle.

Si vous voulez trouver la racine des inégalités intranationales de l'Amérique et le déclin international, arrêter par votre école primaire locale. Des décennies de recherche montrent que la classe de maternelle est le point sur le graphique où les lignes commencent à diverger fondée sur la race, classe et de statut socio-économique et, ainsi, où la performance éducative de notre pays commence à traîner ceux d'autres pays.

À partir de 1999 à 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics followed a geographically and ethnically diverse group of students, tracking their progress from kindergarten to middle school. They found that by the third grade, a low-income student who is reading below grade level is already 13 times less likely to graduate on time than a reading-proficient, wealthier peer.

Source: The Root