James Meredith.
by Valerie Straus. The Answer Sheet. Washington Post
The
80-year-old Meredith was the first black student to graduate from the
University of Mississippi. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. placed Meredith
first on his own list of heroes in his 1963 Letter From a Birmingham Jail:
“Some
day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths,
courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile
mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer.”
In 1966
Meredith was shot while leading a march that helped open the gates of
voter registration to thousands of black citizens in the South. He later
earned a law degree at Columbia University. In 2013, he was awarded the
Harvard University Graduate School of Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award,
the school’s highest honor, and he is the recipient of the 2014 winner of the
Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence.
Meredith,
who now drives his grandchildren to public school in Jackson, Miss., every day
said:
“We are
losing millions of our children to inferior schools and catastrophically
misguided and ineffective so-called education reforms. Our schools are being
destroyed by politics, profit, greed and lies,” he adds. “Instead of
evidence-based practices, money has become the engine of education policy, and
our schools are being hijacked by politicians, non-educators and for-profit
operators. Parents, teachers, citizens and community elders must arm ourselves
with the best evidence and take back control of our children’s public
education before it is too late. We all must work together to improve our
public schools, not on the basis of profit or politics, but on the basis of
evidence, and on the basis of love for America’s children.”
The
Education Bill of Rights identifies 12 basic education rights for every
American child, all based on his career as a social activist as well as
discussions with thousands of students, parents, teachers and education
experts across America. It was written with William Doyle, the co-author of
Meredith’s 2012 memoir, “A Mission from
God: A Memoir and Challenge for America,” who was recently named to
the Fulbright Scholars Program Specialist roster for 2013-2018.
Meredith
said that billions of dollars now spent on standardized testing and “so-called
education reforms” can be better spent to help children.
“If we
do not commit to this course as a national emergency, America is headed for
disaster.”
Meredith
urges Americans to join a national debate on the American Child’s Education
Bill of Rights, and to add their own ideas, on his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/jamesmeredithusa
The American Child’s Education Bill of Rights
Every
American public school child has the right to:
1. Experienced
Teachers: A school run and staffed by fully qualified professional
educators and teachers; a lead classroom teacher with a minimum of a masters degree
in education and three years classroom experience; a school where computer
products are never used to replace teachers; and a school the leaders of
society would send their own children to.
2. Equity
of Resources: A nation that sends many of its most experienced and
effective teachers to help its highest-poverty and highest-needs students;
strives to deliver educational equity of resources to all students; and
strives to reduce the harm done to children by poverty and segregation.
3. Involved
Parents: A school that strongly encourages and helps parents to: be
directly involved in their children’s education; support their children with
healthy eating and daily physical activity; disconnect their children from TV
and video games and read with them on a daily basis; and a school that
regularly invites parents to take part in school activities.
4. Quality
Learning: A nation where educators and officials collaborate to
identify the best evidence-based practices; a nation that rigorously tests
classroom products and reforms before spending billions of dollars of taxpayer
funds on them, including testing them versus smaller class sizes and more experienced
teachers; a nation that that does not spend billions of taxpayer dollars on
excessive, unreliable and low-quality standardized tests that displace and
damage authentic learning; and an education with an absolute minimum of
standardized tests and a maximum of high-quality, teacher-designed evaluations
of student learning and progress.
5. Effective
Teachers: A school where teachers are evaluated through fair and
aggressive professional peer review, not unreliable standardized test data;
and a school where under-performing teachers are coached, mentored and
supported, and when necessary fired, through a process of professional review
and transparent, timely due process.
6. Personalized
Instruction: A school with small class sizes, similar to those
enjoyed by the children of political and business leaders, so all students can
receive a truly differentiated and personalized instruction, with regular,
close feedback from their teachers.
7. Full
Curriculum and Services: A school system that provides universal
pre-K; a strong early education based on research fundamentals, correct
developmental milestones and educational play; a rich curriculum including the
arts, civics, literature, history, science, field trips, and music; fully
funded, effective and inclusive special education that strives to intervene
early and prevent problems; and if necessary, wraparound social services and a
free, healthy breakfast and lunch.
8. Transparency: A
school where records of every dollar of taxpayer money spent are available for
public inspection; where personally identifiable student information is not
shared with outside parties without express parental consent; where parents
and teachers are involved in school management and policy; and where core
public school functions are not sold off to for-profit operators.
9. Respect
for Children and Teachers: A nation that respects teachers as well as
it respects other elite professions; and considers every child’s physical,
mental and emotional health, happiness and well-being as critical factors for
school behavior, academic achievement and national progress.
10. Safety,
Freedom and Challenge: A school and a classroom that are safe,
comfortable, exciting, happy and well-disciplined; with regular quiet time and
play time in the early grades; regular breaks through the school day; daily
physical education and recess periods; a healthy, developmentally-appropriate
and evidence-based after-school workload; and an atmosphere of low chronic
stress and high productive challenge, where children are free to be children
as they learn, and children are free to fail in the pursuit of success.
11. Reform
Through Rigor and Accountability: A nation that uses rigor,
accountability and transparency when it comes to education reform; where any
proposed major education reforms must be tested first, and based on hard
evidence, independently verified, before being widely adopted and funded by
taxpayers.
12. A
21st Century Education: A school and a nation where children and teachers are
supported, cherished and challenged, and where teachers are left alone to the
maximum extent possible by politicians and bureaucrats to do their jobs – -
which is to prepare children for life, citizenship, and careers with true 21st
century skills: not by drilling them for standardized tests or forcing a
culture of stress, overwork and fear upon them, but by helping them fall in
love with authentic learning for the rest of their lives, inspiring them with
joy, fun, passion, diligence, critical thinking and collaboration, new
discoveries and excitement, and having the highest academic expectations of
them.
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