At a DFER event earlier this week, Bob Wise, former Governor of West Virginia,
former Congressman, and current president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, spoke about his new book: Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation. Meeting him was a wonderful experience since teachers rarely have the opportunity to discuss education with policy makers. He is so friendly and open to discuss his views on education. The part that impressed me the most from our brief discussion was how he wished that he had spent more time concentrating on education policy when he was Governor and in Congress. His passion about the work with the Alliance for Excellent Education is apparent when he is speaking about the dilemma America has within our middle and high schools. Also, how his mission is to build public will and that will improve our graduation rates.
In his brief introduction to the book, he explained how 75% of Americans have no direct contact with public education. He wants to change that statistic by encouraging people to care about middle and high school students so we can ensure our young people have the chance to be competitive nationally and internationally.
His energy and commitment really resonated with the crowd. It was so apparent that the long-time neglect of secondary education will began to cease in the near future. The book is a vehicle of spotlighting the crisis of having 1/3 of students who will not graduate and the other 1/3 who do graduate will not be equipped with literacy skills to be successful in college and in the workplace.
Meeting Bob Wise and hearing him speak really inspired my public will and I am already invested since I am teaching middle school students. Hopefully, this book and his collaboration with the Alliance for Excellent Education will make all people in America see that a change must happen in secondary education and all of the public must be a part of it.
Claire Lowenstein is a New York City public school teacher at PS 333, Manhattan School For Children. Claire has taught middle school English, History, Special Education, and in Collaborative Team Teaching model for the last ten years in three different public schools in Manhattan. Claire has recently taken a leadership role at her current school to help plan a more successful framework for the upcoming school year. Last year, she was a Teachers Network Leadership Met-Life fellow conducting action research around cross age peer tutoring. This summer she is participating in a DFER fellowship for 2008-2009.