TheLoop21.com

By: raechal (follow this member)
Thu, 09/10/2009 - 18:28

I got the chills Tuesday at the launch of Get Schooled, while watching a clip from Davis Guggenheim's upcoming film on public education. In it, a little Black boy talked to the camera about school and about how his father had died from drugs. It showed the boy entering a lottery for a seat at a reputable charter school in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, other speakers, including Bill Gates, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller, floated in and out with their own impressive presentations. They came armed with scary statistics about the dismal graduation rates, especially for Black and Latino students, and about education's relationship with our battered economy. (Read bios of the Get Schooled speakers.)

The problem is few Blacks and Latinos were on stage or in the audience. Stephen Minix, the athletic director at L.A.'s Locke High, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Miller appeared. I saw the Rev. Al Sharpton take a seat in the crowd after the lights had gone down.

Yet it only makes sense to me that the people who have the most to gain from these changes are given at least an equal seat at the table and, if they're not offered one, demand it. We can't wave away the socioeconomic disparities that leave us with fewer African American and Latino CEOs and big money philanthropists to orchestrate these initiatives, but we also can't get anywhere if the people who know communities of color best, the ones who can offer context for closing the gap between the performances of white students and everyone else, aren't even in the room.

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