| A Community Raises its Voice: Students Demand Accountability from National Education Officials |
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| Written by Koby Murphy | |||
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On September 29th 2009 The Listening and Learning Tour: A Conversation About Education Reform made its national debut in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton, and former Speaker of The House Newt Gingrich are visiting communities across the country to hear from students, parents, teachers, and community members.
Philadelphia Student Union was looking forward to the opportunity to talk to these leaders about our local experiences and the perspectives that we have on national education reform policy. Some of the things that we wanted to put forward were our successes with community-led whole school transformation, and the importance of schools that serve all students, have personalized learning environments, and multiple ways of assessing student progress and learning. In preparation for the tour we reached out to ask both Mr. Duncan and Mr. Sharpton to meet with us and a coalition of 20 other groups of parents, students, and teachers. We also approached our local leadership about participating in the roundtable discussion and press conference. However, we were barred from participating in the conversation, and only had the opportunity to dialogue through a fence as the leaders were leaving the press conference. If the people whose voices should have been heard were excluded from the process then who is it that they really listened to? Without allowing concerned communities the opportunity to engage them in the conversation about education what is it that they learned? Overall, we believe that national education policy-makers can learn from communities as well as district and elected officials. We hope that they feel the same way. Reform across the nation has to take into account the utter lack of equity across the nation’s school districts and even inside districts, and heed input from the peoples that navigate through the education system. In the end after students confronted Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Reverend Al Sharpton, we were able to get a commitment to a meeting. Philadelphia Student Union members are looking forward to discussing the future of educational reform. •
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