News from the Equity Campaign

On Tuesday, October 11, 2011, the Campaign for Educational Equity will issue five new white papers and will host an important forum on these reports, “Achievable and Affordable: Providing Comprehensive Educational Opportunity to Low-Income Students.”

Susan H. Fuhrman, president of Teachers College, Columbia University, will moderate a panel discussion of the five reports that detail the Campaign for Educational Equity's ambitious agenda for systemic educational reform. The legal, financial, and social policy ramifications of this plan will be presented and debated. 

Panelists include:

• Michael Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity
• John B. King Jr., New York State Commissioner of Education and president of the University of the State of New York
• Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey, president of Say Yes to Education
• David Wakelyn, Deputy Secretary for Education in the State of New York
• Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers
  
  

The forum will begin with a reception at 5:00 p.m.; the panel presentation will begin at 6:00. For more information and to register, see our Events page.

The Campaign for Educational Equity believes that all children have a right to meaningful educational opportunities and that achievement gaps between disadvantaged and advantaged students will persist unless a concerted effort is made to provide such opportunities. Meaningful educational opportunities are comprehensive; they encompass high quality schooling opportunities; additional coordinated out of school services and supports for children from backgrounds of poverty; and constancy in the provision of these resources and services throughout each child’s educational career, despite changes in external economic conditions.

Advocates and policymakers have embraced a comprehensive approach in the past, but it has never achieved the grounding in law and policy it needs to be sustained and implemented on a broad basis. So, for the past two years, the Campaign for Educational Equity has been working with a task force of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to address the notion that closing the achievement gap requires a concept of equity in education that focuses both on the opportunities provided in formal school settings and on providing full range of educationally relevant “out of school” services. To succeed in school, in addition to effective teachers, contemporary curricula, and quality facilities and materials, low-income students also need access to early childhood, after-school and summer programming, health care, and family support services.

The five papers that will be issued on October 11 and discussed at the event are the culmination of the first phase of the task force’s work. The next phase of the task force will focus on implementation issues and model legislation.

Published Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011