Yesterday NPR profiled Robert Moses, one of America’s most courageous civil rights leaders. In the early 1960’s, Moses organized Mississippi sharecroppers to fight for the right to vote, helping to shape the civil rights movement in the South. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Moses left the US and taught secondary school in Tanzania, returning in the mid ’70s and eventually settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
While in Cambridge, Moses started to see the disparities in the educational offerings between schools in low and high-income areas and decided to do something about it. So in 1982, Moses used a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award to start the Algebra Project, a nonprofit working with low-scoring math students to prepare them for college-level math courses. The Algebra Project has since expanded to more than 200 schools, and also provides professional development to math teachers across the nation. Moses’ organization is clearly an extension of his lifelong campaign to extend civil rights and freedom to the poor and disenfranchised.
The Algebra Project emerged from Robert Moses’ belief that civic equality is rooted in educational equity. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of civil rights leaders like Moses and education reformers across the country there are still too many kids of color that are not receiving the education they deserve. Take Washington state, for example. In our state, only 54.6% of black high school students passed the End of Course Math 2 Assessment during the 2010-11 school year, compared to the state average of 79.1%. Talk about a modern version of Jim Crow.
Like Moses, I believe that access to a high-quality education is a civil right. In order to move forward as a nation, we need to ensure that all of our kids, regardless of race, gender or socioeconomic status, are academically challenged and prepared for the future.
Moses could not have said it better: “The next lurch forward in civil rights is that every child in America gets a quality public education and that our nation’s promise of freedom continues.”
Lisa Macfarlane is the Washington State Director for Democrats for Education Reform, a co-founder of the League of Education Voters, a past President of Schools First (Seattle’s levy and bond committee), the sponsor of two statewide education funding initiatives, and a PCO in the 46th District. Read Lisa’s full bio here.