We will take the school to her...

Please read this recent story surrounding a mother jailed for illegally placing her children in a higher performing school.

Here's the MTR / Christian context on urban education takeaway.... WE WILL TAKE THE SCHOOL (she wants) TO HER.

Read below (introductory paragraph copied from Whitney Tilson email):

This story is getting national attention, as it should. A low-income, black, single mom, fed up with crappy schools in the only place she could afford to live, snuck her two daughters into a much better school (serving, of course, wealthy, white students) and, for trying to do what’s right for her kids, was SENTENCED TO PRISON. This is an outrage! Here’s hoping that this becomes a rallying cry – a Rosa Parks moment – for education reform in general, and parental choice in particular.

Here’s the spot-on response from the Black Alliance for Educational Options:

BAEO Responds to Imprisonment of Ohio Mother

January 26, 2011

We are writing to express outrage at the circumstances that led to the prosecution and conviction of Kelley Williams-Bolar. As reported in the Akron Beacon Journal, Williams-Bolar was found guilty and sentenced severely for an act that defied the strict letter of the law but does not defy reason. She sent her daughters to schools outside her district of residence.

Ohio law says that if you live in Akron, you must send your children to your neighborhood school, even if it is a failing school and regardless of whether you feel your child would get a better education and stand a better chance of success elsewhere. The law says you're stuck-unless you're wealthy enough to opt out or fortunate enough to get into a high-performing charter school or to get selected for one of only 14,000 EdChoice scholarships available state-wide.

Williams-Bolar is not wealthy, so paying private school tuition for her two children was not an option, nor could she afford to move out of public housing and into a district with better schools. To be fair, Ohio has done more than most states in terms of providing options for parents whose children need better educational opportunities. But clearly, more could and should be done. In far too many states, however, these parents have no choice at all. It is high time we change the laws that force low-income and working-class families to choose between playing by the rules and doing what's best for their children.

Earlier this month, our nation honored the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., and this week, BAEO joins families, educators, and advocacy groups coast to coast in celebrating National School Choice Week. The Williams-Bolar case is a sober reminder that Dr. King's dream remains unrealized, and parental choice is the most pressing civil rights issue of our time. Every child deserves access to a quality education, and as Dr. King said, we must act with the fierce urgency of now.

Today, Kelley Williams-Bolar is serving a jail sentence for pursuing a better educational option for her daughters. Meanwhile, her children must-like thousands of other low-income students of color-endure a sentence of their own: consignment to unsafe, underperforming schools in close proximity to their homes, year after year. There is no justice here.

Below is a longer article from the Education Action Group:

The folks in charge of National School Choice Week are calling Kelley Williams-Bolar the "Rosa Parks of education."

Her story illustrates their message perfectly, and it couldn't have hit the front pages at a more opportune time.

Williams-Bolar is a single mother of two daughters who lives in Akron, Ohio. Four years ago she decided she wanted her kids to have a quality education, so she enrolled them in the neighboring Copley-Fairlawn school district, which presumably offers a better program and safer environment than Akron Public Schools.

Unfortunately her kids were not qualified to attend Copley-Fairlawn unless Williams-Bolar paid tuition. School officials finally figured out that she did not live in the district, and her children did not live with her father, who resides in the Copley-Fairlawn district.

They asked Williams-Bolar to pay $30,000 in back tuition. When she failed to produce that sort of money, the courts got involved.

She was sentenced to 10 days in jail, two years of probation and community service for falsifying public school records.

To make matters worse, Williams-Bolar, a university student preparing to become a teacher, will not be able to get a job in her field in Ohio, because convicted felons are banned from teaching positions.

Williams-Bolar went to jail, and perhaps crippled her professional future, for sending her kids to the school of her choice. And all of this happened in the middle of National School Choice Week.

"I did this for them, so there it is," she was quoted as saying about her kids. "I did this for them."

Now, we just need the teachers... Come on.

A captain has to be a captain.

In this morning's Wall Street Journal (January 20, 2011), Peggy Noonan writes a column filled with some essentials of leadership that are good to hear. Her theme, to me, is summed up in one of her brief sentences: "A captain has to be a captain."

Read on:

The Captain and the King

Why Owen Honors had to go, and why a stammering monarch is a movie hero.

At a time of new beginnings in Washington, and as a new year starts, some thoughts on leadership that begin with two questions. First, why is it a good thing that the captain of the USS Enterprise was this week relieved of his duties? Second, why is the movie "The King's Speech" so popular and admired? The questions are united by a theme. It is that no one knows how to act anymore, and people miss people who knew how to act.

Capt. Owen Honors, commanding officer of an aircraft carrier, was revealed to have made and shown to his crew videos that have been variously described in the press as "lewd," "raunchy," "profane" and "ribald." They are. Adm. John Harvey, who Wednesday relieved Capt. Honors of his duties, said the captain's action "calls into question his character and undermines his credibility." Also true.

In a way it's not shocking that Capt. Honors did what he did, because he came from a culture, our culture, in which, to be kind about it, anything goes. Mainstream movies, television, music—all is raunch. To say the obvious, John Paul Jones, Bull Halsey and Elmo Zumwalt likely wouldn't have made those videos, if they could have. More to the point, some average, undistinguished naval captain in 1968 wouldn't have made them either, because he would have had his mind and consciousness formed in the 1930s and '40s, when our culture was more coherent and constructive. It can also be said that Capt. Honors's videos were not extreme by the standards of our day. Even his bigotry seemed self-spoofing, as obviously nitwittish and vulgar as the character he was playing—himself—was nitwittish and vulgar.

But the videos were a shock in that this was a captain of the U.S. Navy, commanding a nuclear-powered ship, and acting in a way that was without dignity, stature or apartness. He was acting as if it was important to him to be seen as one of the guys, with regular standards, like everyone else.

But it's a great mistake when you are in a leadership position to want to be like everyone else. Because that, actually, is not your job. Your job is to be better, and to set standards that those below you have to reach to meet. And you have to do this even when it's hard, even when you know you yourself don't quite meet the standards you represent.

A captain has to be a captain. He can't make videos referencing masturbation and oral sex. He has to uphold values even though he finds them antique, he has to represent virtues he may not in fact possess, he has to be, in his person, someone sailors aspire to be.

A lot of our leaders—the only exceptions I can think of at the moment are nuns in orders that wear habits—have become confused about something, and it has to do with being an adult, with being truly mature and sober. When no one wants to be the stuffy old person, when no one wants to be "the establishment," when no one accepts the role of authority figure, everything gets damaged, lowered. The young aren't taught what they need to know. And they know they're not being taught, and on some level they resent it.

MLK and the Purpose of Education, 1948

Martin Luther King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948. During his senior year, MLK wrote the following words on the "Purpose of Education". As we seek to pursue urban education within a Christian context, I thought his words on education were especially encouraging and on-target:

"The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living."

My takeaway: PURPOSE (God-given worthy objectives) is as important to living as is EDUCATION. And what powerful allies they are together.

MTR Remembers MLK

On the 82nd anniversary of his birth, MTR remembers Martin Luther King, Jr. ...

The Seattle Times writes this of MLK: "Martin Luther King Jr. has now been dead longer than he lived. But what an extraordinary life it was. At 33, he was pressing the case of civil rights with President John Kennedy. At 34, he galvanized the nation with his "I Have a Dream" speech. At 35, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. At 39, he was assassinated, but he left a legacy of hope and inspiration that continues today."

He spoke not only to our President, but also to our children and our students. On October 26, 1967, six months before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia. His speech was titled, "What is Your Life's Blueprint?"

What Is Your Life's Blueprint?

I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life's blueprint?

Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.

Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.

I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint.

Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you fell that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

Secondly, in your life's blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.

And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to you--doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they open.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

This hasn't always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don't drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you're forced to live in — stay in school.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

Dr. King called us to live life (and therefore teach) within this great Christian context... even as he spoke to young children. See his message:

1. You are SOMEBODY. YOU have worth and significance... because you were created by God and for God. And nothing man can say or do can ever take that away.

2. Be EXCELLENT... because you work for God and not for man. Determine to be great for Him.

3. Be HUMBLE (implied)... enough to know that dignity and excellence are determined not by the size of your wealth, status and power. Dignity and greatness are bestowed upon those who take their greatness from God's definition and not the world's. Therefore, live with dignity and give dignity on His terms, not man's.

We recognized MLK's brilliance and contribution to our nation by honoring him with a national holiday in 1986. He is the only non-U.S. president honored in this way. I suggest we take note of his words and pass them on to our students.

Enjoy Monday by remembering the spirit of the holiday.

Improving Teachers, Lessons Learned

See this week's (January 6, 2011) issue of The Economist, "Improving Teachers, Lessons Learned".

http://www.economist.com/node/17851511?story_id=17851511

Focusing on teachers as the leverage point for learning and residency models as the format for training great teachers is gaining traction nationally. See the following quotes:

"BUDGET, curriculum, class size—none has a greater effect on a student than his or her teacher."

"The Academy of Urban School Leadership in Chicago (a UTRU network partner, mine) trains teachers in a programme modelled after a medical residency—part traditional coursework, part training in a classroom. Such models may become more common; in November the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education recommended that residency-style programmes become the norm."

Jim Crow, M.D.

First for context, Dr. Bill Frist is a former US Senator from Tennessee, was the Senate majority leader and was an often mentioned potential candidate for President. He held true to his self-imposed two-term limit and did not run for senate reelection in 2008. Prior to his political career, Dr. Frist was a highly regarded heart surgeon in Nashville, TN.

For his post-political career, Dr. Frist was convinced of the need (and of his opportunity) to positively impact health care. Interestingly, as he researched the most effective strategies in solving the health care issues in America, Dr. Frist determined that the single greatest leverage point in health care is .... EDUCATION. As a result, Dr. Frist founded SCORE in an effort to lead and promote an aggressive urban education reform agenda for the state of Tennessee. Education, in Dr. Frist's mind, is the key driver for improving health care. Now that's leverage.

Second, to compliment that thought, please see this article from Sunday's Memphis Commercial Appeal on Jim Crow, M.D. and the health care gap between rich and poor / black and white (http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/jan/09/jim-crow-md-choosing-not-to-know/). I found this quote interesting and in line with Dr. Frist's thought on education's impact on health care.

"All the diseases disproportionately affect the poor: chiefly African-Americans and Latinos, in inner cities and rural areas, especially in the South, Appalachia and along the Mexican border. 'You show me poor people in Memphis, and I'll show you these diseases,' said Hotez. He called them 'living legacies of slavery.' And they perpetuate a cycle of poverty."

Lack of education leads to poverty which translates into poor health and health care. Poor health and health care leads to poverty which leads to poor education.

You teach kids and you have the opportunity to change lives. In many ways.

Former TN Senator Dr. Bill Frist's editorial on TN education

Dr. Bill Frist is a former U.S. Senate majority leader and is currently chairman of the nonprofit Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE).

During my years of public service, there has been no more exciting year for education in Tennessee than 2010. Last year, state and local leaders joined together, across party lines, to commit to reforming our state’s education system and improving education for every Tennessean.

The list of accomplishments is long — winning a $500 million federal Race to the Top grant to support innovative K-12 education reforms; attracting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to invest more than $90 million in the state to improve teacher effectiveness; and passing historic education legislation in the state legislature, Tennessee’s largest piece of education reform legislation since 1992. 2010 will be remembered as the year Tennessee leaped to the forefront of the national education reform movement.

This commitment to reform could come at no better time. As statistics show, producing an educated work force is critical to creating jobs. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing occupations in our state require some type of postsecondary degree. Many of the state’s newest employers — including Hemlock Semiconductor in Clarksville and Volkswagen in Chattanooga — require at least some type of postsecondary training for their employees. And estimates have shown that over the course of a lifetime, a college graduate makes nearly $1 million more than a worker with only a high school diploma. Improving our state’s education system means attracting more and better-paying jobs for Tennesseans.

But while 2010 was a banner year for education reform, we are just getting started. The first step to achieving more is expecting more, and new data released this week reflect that this is exactly what Tennessee is doing. For the first time, the state Department of Education is publishing yearly achievement data on individual schools and school districts based on new, rigorous academic benchmarks implemented just last year, benchmarks that raise the bar and more accurately reflect how Tennessee students perform relative to their peers nationally. In Tennessee, we are now asking more from our principals, teachers and, most importantly, our students.

Math, reading work needed

While we now know where Tennessee students stand, the data released this week also show how much work we have left to do. Only 26 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in math, and only 42 percent are proficient in reading. Other recent studies have shown that only 16 percent of 11th-graders are prepared to enter college without taking remedial coursework, and only 2.9 percent of Tennessee students scored “advanced” on international math tests, ranking Tennessee students behind students from Russia, Germany, Turkey and 36 other nations.

2011, therefore, will be a critical year for education in Tennessee as the work of implementing the reforms of 2010 begins. For policymakers, this means demanding timely and successful execution of key reforms, especially the development of a new teacher evaluation system that can help improve the effectiveness of principals and teachers across the state. For educators, this means rising to the challenge of teaching to higher standards and using new data about student progress to ensure every child’s achievement improves. And for communities and parents, this means expecting more from our children and providing them with the support they need to succeed.

So while we should applaud our many accomplishments from 2010, we must redouble our efforts in 2011. Our work as a state will remain unfinished until every Tennessee child graduates high school prepared for college or the work force.

My thoughts:

1. "2010 will be remembered as the year Tennessee leaped to the forefront of the national education reform movement."

We (Tennessee) really is leading the urban education reform movement. And MEMPHIS is leading

Tennessee. Therefore, Memphis is leading the nation in urban education reform.

2. "For educators, this means rising to the challenge of teaching to higher standards and using new data about student progress to ensure every child’s achievement improves."

Dr. Frist's call to teachers, at this critical time, is to RISE TO THE CHALLENGE (read: work hard, work smart, be relentless and unwavering, taking personal responsibility) by being Standards-Based and Data-Driven (SBDD) to positively impact student achievement.

Right down our alley. It's as though Dr. Frist graduated from MTR... we've got the right idea, the right model. Let's stay at it for the long haul.

Lessons from Nate Saint on the 55th anniversary of his death

January 8th is the 55th anniversary of the killing of five American missionaries near Quita, Ecuador by the Auca Indians. The most famous of those missionaries is Jim Elliot. A summary of their story (Operation Auca) can be found at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/marchweb-only/110-52.0.html.

Nate Saint, the team's pilot, was also one of those martyred. A few weeks before his death, Nate Saint wrote this Christmas Letter to his friends and family:

Nate Saint's Christmas Letter (December 18, 1955)

“As we weigh the future and seek the will of God, does it seem right that we should hazard our lives for just a few savages? As we ask ourselves this question, we realize that it is not the call of the needy thousands, rather it is the simple intimation of the prophetic Word that there shall be some from every tribe in His presence in the last day and in our hearts we feel that it is pleasing to Him that we should interest ourselves in making an opening into the Auca prison for Christ.

As we have a high old time this Christmas, may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for these we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethlehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha. May God give us a new vision of His will concerning the lost and our responsibility.

Would that we could comprehend the lot of these stone-age people who live in mortal fear of ambush on the jungle trail . . . those to whom the bark of a gun means sudden, mysterious death . . . those who think all men in all the world are killers like themselves. If God would grant us the vision, the word sacrifice would disappear from our lips and thoughts; we would hate the things that seem now so dear to us; our lives would suddenly be too short, we would despise time-robbing distractions and charge the enemy with all our energies in the name of Christ. May God help us to judge ourselves by the eternities that separate the Aucas from a comprehension of Christmas and Him, who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor so that we might, through His poverty, be made rich.”


My thoughts:
1. I want to be a Nate Saint.
2. I want MTR filled with Nate Saint's.
3. That in comparison to our unwavering passion for displaying God's greatness to the world through an authentic response to the gospel in urban education, the "word sacrifice would disappear from our lips and thoughts; we would hate the things that seem now so dear to us; and our lives would suddenly be too short; and we would despise time-robbing distractions"... What a privilege and honor to serve in this way for our 20 seconds on earth.

Please pray that God might choose to reveal Himself as good and powerful and faithful to His promises to those in need by raising up a generation to positively impact student achievement in Memphis schools.