2014 Community Guide NCCC The following is an excerpt of a speech given at the Forecast North Chicago annual meeting in February 2014. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending today’s Forecast North Chicago. This will be my final year as President as I will be transitioning in a few months to a successor. In light of that, I thought it useful to make a few reflections. It has been an incredible learning and growing experience to provide leadership and direction and to be a part of this organization. The Chamber is beginning to think about its future, do some strategic planning and re-invent itself for the realities of tomorrow. In regards to education, with the support of the Chamber, we have focused a significant amount of time and resources toward changing and transforming the landscape of educational opportunities for the students in this community. Why? Because what has been allowed to occur in this district for far too long is immoral. At every level of accountability there has been systematic failure with catastrophic results. Some will say that it is the impact of poverty. Well maybe… Forty percent of children living in poverty aren’t prepared for primary schooling. Children that live below the poverty line are 1.3 times more likely to have developmental delays or learning disabilities than those who don’t live in poverty. By the end of the 4th grade, African-American, Hispanic and low-income students are already two years behind grade level. By the time they reach the 12th grade, they are four years behind. The nation’s lowest-performing high schools produce 58 percent of all African-American dropouts and 50 percent of all Hispanic dropouts, compared to 22 percent of all white dropouts. So there are terse statistics. Less than 30 percent of students in the bottom quarter of incomes enroll in a four-year school. Among that group – less than half graduate. 6
Hundreds of thousands of dollars, thousands of man hours have not yet transformed this system. As business leaders who measure the bottom line, we must say that this is immoral. But the other side to the coin is that the nation is missing out on the human capital that the proverbial Javier, Robert, Tyneisha and Mary can bring. How many bankers, entrepreneurs, scientists, teachers, managers, engineers, nurses, health care workers, have been produced in the last 14 years? How many knowledge workers have come out of these schools? How many inventors and researchers have not come out or vaccines were not created because they were ill prepared? In a study conducted by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, an article pointed to bleak disparities in test scores on four fronts: between black and Hispanic children and white children; between poor and wealthy students; between Americans and students abroad; and between students of similar backgrounds educated in different parts of the country. The report concluded that if those achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day. In New York City, schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said that a study on disparity vindicated the idea that the root cause of test-score disparities was not poverty or family circumstances, but subpar teachers and principals. He pointed to an analysis in the report showing lowincome black fourth graders from the city outperformed students in all other major urban districts on reading (they came in second in math). “Schools can be the game changer,” he said. “We are able to get very, very different results with the same children.” In the book “Good Schools in Poor Neighborhoods: Defying Demographics, Achieving Success” by Beatriz Chu Clewell and Patricia B. Campbell, they show that it can be done and is being done. The authors meticulously document that poverty can no longer be used as an excuse for low-achieving schools. The authors found 5 key success facts that boil down to 3. Principals, teachers, parents. Principals-instructional leaders who encourage innovation Teachers-who were willing to go the extra mile Parents-who volunteer and get engaged in the success of their schools.
2014 North Chicago Community Guide | northchicagochamber.org