Recently published studies indicate the School District of Lancaster is not making progress and perhaps is even falling behind in its endeavor to successfully educate its largely inner city, minority population.
Like all school systems and especially those serving inner cities, the competence of the teaching staff varies widely.
Perhaps it is time for Superintendant Pedro Rivera and the School Board to reach out to an organization named Teach For America (TFO), which has attractive much positive comment by educators and officials.
The following is from the TFO web site:
Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates and professionals of all academic majors and career interests who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity.
Since our inception 20,000 individuals have participated in Teach For America, impacting the lives of approximately 3 million students.
There is unfortunately a societal belief that schools can’t make a significant difference in the face of socioeconomic disparities, that children of color cannot meet high expectations, and that it is not worthwhile to invest in mitigating the challenges of poverty that make it harder for students to focus at school.
Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting our nation’s most promising future leaders in the effort.
In the short run, our corps members work relentlessly to ensure that more students growing up today in our country’s lowest-income communities are given the educational opportunities they deserve. In the long run, our alumni are a powerful force of leaders working from inside education and from every other sector to effect the fundamental changes needed to ensure that all children have an equal chance in life.
During their two-year commitments, corps members see firsthand that educational inequity is a problem we can solve and gain a grounded understanding of how to solve it. As alumni, they bring strong leadership to every level of the school system and across all fields, working to minimize the extra challenges facing children growing up in low-income communities, build the capacity of schools and school systems, and change the prevailing ideology through their examples and advocacy.
At the same time, we know that teachers who go above and beyond to compensate for the extra challenges facing children and the weaknesses of the system are not the ultimate solution. We believe that the best hope for a lasting solution is to build a massive force of leaders who have the insight and conviction that comes from teaching successfully in low-income communities.
While the problem is daunting, we see evidence every day in classrooms across the country that when students in low-income communities are given the educational opportunities they deserve, they excel on an absolute scale.
