COLUMBIA, 5/26/11 (Beat Byte) -- During the
2011 Columbia School (CPS) Board race, this reporter called Board candidate
proposals to close the much-discussed "achievement gap" empty,
unimaginative, and ineffective.
Now, former CPS assistant superintendent Jack Jensen has introduced a
holistic approach to achievement gap closure called Strive which relies on "broad
cross-sector coordination" rather than the "isolated intervention of individual
organizations."
Now the executive director of early childhood education advocacy group First Chance for Children, Jensen said he found Strive "an interesting framework for change in a community. With my background, I thought about the Achievement Gap as the issue to tackle."
To improve school achievement among minorities with the non-profit Strive
program, the entire city, county, and business community partner
with the school district in a way that isn't even discussed,
much less implemented amidst Columbia's community leadership fiefdoms.
Instead, the achievement gap is largely viewed as a problem restricted to two
groups: the school district and the Black community. Strive
takes a more big picture approach.
"The scale and complexity of the U.S. public education system has thwarted
attempted reforms for decades," reads a Winter 2011 Stanford Social
Innovation report Jensen forwarded to several dozen community
leaders. "Against these daunting odds, a remarkable exception seems to
be emerging in Cincinnati."
That exception -- Strive -- "has brought together local
leaders to tackle the student achievement crisis and improve education
throughout greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky," write authors John
Kania and Mark Kramer. "In the four years since the group was launched, Strive
partners have improved student success in dozens of key areas across
three large public school districts...including high school graduation
rates, fourth-grade reading and math scores, and the number of preschool
children prepared for kindergarten."
Now the executive director of early childhood education advocacy group First Chance for Children, Jensen said he found Strive "an interesting framework for change in a community. With my background, I thought about the Achievement Gap as the issue to tackle."
Strive has succeeded, Kania and Kramer argue, because "a core group of
community leaders decided to abandon their individual agendas in favor
of a collective approach to improving student achievement."
That group included more than 300 leaders of
Cincinnati-area organizations, from influential private businesses to city
government, eight universities and numerous advocacy groups. "These leaders
realized that fixing one point on the educational continuum—such as better
after-school programs—wouldn’t make much difference unless all parts of the
continuum improved at the same time. No single organization, however innovative
or powerful, could accomplish this alone."
In Columbia, however, the school district has gone it alone for years, with
little help from City Hall, County Hall, or powerful, prominent types too busy
dodging their property taxes to worry much about helping under-privileged
children learn to read and write.
This year, City Hall is yanking police officers from school-based safety
programs in a fit of budgetary pique (while spending millions as usual, now on
ill-advised parking garages). The County Commission and Court system are
busily expanding too, in large part -- at least where the Courts are concerned
-- to accomodate offenders whose criminal careers often emerge from the
depths of the achievement gap.
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