April 22nd, 2009 by Alan Gottlieb ( http://blog.ednewscolorado.org)
Before 8 a.m. today, I was treated to one of those studies in contrast that make life so interesting.
It started with Thomas Friedman, over my morning coffee.
Friedman is an excellent columnist, turns a nifty phrase, and has changed many people’s thinking on globalization. Some would say by parroting corporate CEOs, but that is a topic for a different blog.
He comes a bit late to the school reform debate, but it’s a big (circus) tent and all are welcome.
In his column today, on America in decline, Friedman quotes a McKinsey consultant who makes an important point:
There are millions of kids who are in modern suburban schools “who don’t realize how far behind they are,” said Matt Miller, one of the authors. “They are being prepared for $12-an-hour jobs – not $40 to $50 an hour.”
All too often many people assume that the woes besieging our nation belong to cities alone. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There are a lot of satisfied consumers (and, truth be told, educators) in the ‘burbs who think their kids are being well prepared for post-secondary life. But a look at remediation rates should set them straight.
After reading Friedman’s column, I headed over to Denver’s high-poverty Kepner Middle School for a breakfast honoring the Kepner Educational Excellence Program. Miracle worker Carrie Olson, a one-in-a-million teacher, has been taking inner-city kids on trips to Europe for the past six years and Washington D.C. for the past 16. Kids and their parents raise all the money for the trips, with a boost from KEEP a non-profit created to support the program.
At today’s breakfast, the mother of one girl, now in high school, broke down in sobs while describing how her daughter’s eighth-grade trip to Europe propelled her out of the neighborhood mind-set of girls wanting to start having babies as soon as they are biologically able to reproduce.
And two eighth-graders described being moved to tears while standing in the room in Amsterdam where Anne Frank penned her diary, which they read before and after their trip.
I’m betting Ms. Olson’s kids will beat the odds and make it to college and beyond. One big reason is that their teacher is driven by a sense of urgency that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, seems to be lacking in too many schools, urban and suburban.
See Alan Gottlieb’s full blog at “education news Colorado.” http://blog.ednewscolorado.org
