The Committee’s Education Project Director, Kent Withycombe, made the following remarks during a press conference by the Coalition for DC Public Schools and Communities (C4DC) June 28, 2018, where this broad coalition of parents, teachers, administrators and education advocates from every Ward in the District emphasized the true public engagement that the Mayor is required to do before selecting a new Chancellor for District of Columbia Public Schools:

Martin Luther King often quoted Yeats on the purpose of education, although Plutarch likely said it first, “Education is not the filling of a pail; it is the lighting of a fire.”

We need a Chancellor and Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) who truly get that. We have to allow our teachers to inspire students through project-based, learner-centered explorations, rather than drill them in English and Math tests.

If we focus on that lodestar of what great education is, we’ll make more progress in closing the opportunity gap that still divides students of color and students from low-income neighborhoods from wealthier students in the same District.

All of our students deserve deep exposure to science, technology, art, music, foreign languages, and athletics; not just those who have well-funded PTOs and come from wealthy households.

Further, that is what keeps students interested and excited about school.

Truancy will decrease, and it will make it easier for schools to comply with the new Student Fair Access to School Act, as there will be less pressure on schools to suspend, exclude or push out students with learning differences, students of color, and those challenged by trauma and poverty.

We need a Chancellor and DME fully committed to closing the achievement and opportunity gaps.

Further, as students of color are disproportionately affected by old-school suspension practices, we need a Chancellor and DME committed to implementing restorative justice for students and trauma-informed training for all school personnel, as required by the Student Fair Access to School Act.

We need a Chancellor and DME who will stop the cooking of the graduation, suspension and attendance books, as those scandals disproportionately affect low-income students and students of color.

Our new Chancellor and DME must rectify the increasing segregation of our public schools. For example, most African American students in DC go to schools that are more than 90 percent African American.

The Mayor must listen to our school communities in this selection process, and our new Chancellor and DME must pay attention to them, too.

They all must be attuned to how rapid gentrification is pushing people of color out of the neighborhoods where they have lived for generations, and how that is challenging so many school communities.

Finally, as a lottery system may never be fair or equitable, all of our neighborhood schools must be excellent choices.

When they are, and affordable housing is available in all Wards, the District can become a model for achieving the required vision of Brown v Board of Education: a truly integrated and inspiring public education with vibrant and broadly-supported school communities in every Ward.

Read the full press release here.