Former President of the National Urban League Calls for National Achievement Campaign

Countless books have been written about the best ways to improve our public education system, as well the importance of a strong school-family bond. But according to the former president and CEO of the National Urban League, Hugh Price, scant attention has been paid to the responsibility and role of the community in promoting literacy and academic achievement.

Price, who served as the Urban League's president from 1994 to 2002, made the promotion of academic achievement the centerpiece of his tenure. Now he’s written a book, Mobilizing the Community to Help Students Succeed, to share with educators successful community-organizing efforts that have contributed to stronger cultures of achievement, improved student performance in school, strengthened support for better-qualified teachers, and heightened school-community trust.

According to Price, “the real-world experiences captured in this book convince me that well-organized communities working in sync with schools and educators can do even more to stoke students' desire for achievement. A thoughtfully designed and faithfully executed campaign to motivate youngsters to succeed in school creates a ‘win-win-win’ for educators, for students, and for entire nations—present and future.”

Do you agree with Price that community engagement and involvement is essential to closing the achievement gap? If so, why do you think that it’s largely been overlooked?

Comments

[Bob Keeley]

In the 1970s, I worked with a community organization in the South Shore community of Chicago. The community was faced with a few big issues, like 1. the neighborhood changing from all white to all black within a ten year period as the african-American community broke through the restrictive covenants set up in the 1930s and their community expanded in people; 2, the local bank deciding to move downtown because as they argued before the OCCV they could not make a fair profit in an all-black community of "under average" income; 3. the liquor interests in the city were beginning to move ther tavern outlets into the neighborhood's weakest business strip; and the 3. major private club of the South Side's wealthier whites was closing and up for sale to the highest bidder and possibly to developers who would build high rises and block off the community from enjoying the lake front.
Working with a new black-white residential coalition we put together, we organized from 1972 through 1975 105 residential block units or clubs made up of citizens who focused on block issues. A block in Chicago is about 30 homes, fifteen on each side of an intervening street. Through the block clubs network, we did alley clean-ups, offered a winter block snow ploughing services,stepped up our community 8 page newsletter to two times a month at 7,000 copies, and arranaged door to door passing out of the newspaper to almost 4,000 homes and then distributed the rest through the local chamber. With the community thinking organization and newly found awareness and power, we began to tackle the four biggest issues--1. we stopped the bank from moving downtown, 2. "helped" the City to purchase the old country club lakefront and turning it over to the park district for use as a fine park and banquet, wedding, arts and theatre facility; 3. then we stopped the Park District from tearing down the beautiful MachinaC Island era-like structure; and 4. we cleaned up the liquor retail outlet concentration/sin strip that was building up along our 75th street corridor--using the local option Liquor Referendum. Each of the 11 precincts who voted on the local option did so for an average vote of 81% in favor of closing the liquor outlets. Slowly over the next eyar s as their appeals ran out, the taverns and sin strip closed down and/or moved to another community.
Our theme through the whole seven year struggle, 1972-1979, was developing and maintaining the residential quality of the community. This meant hosuing code ienforcement and Little league building, etc. in addition to the four major projects indicated above.
One of our chief helpers was the Chicago head of the Urban League, Jim Compton. Jim lived in our community and communicated his thoughts and support to us through his landlord, one of our key block captains.
One block took a picture of their summer party that featured all of their youngpeople who were in college.
So, if you ask me, can an organized community accomplish things that help the community and help the kids in that community--civicly, spiritually, socially, athletically and educationally? the answer is YES.
Bob Keeley
Chicago public school teacher