EUREKA! MIDDLE SCHOOLS WILL GET SCIENCE LABS, THANKS TO PARENTS
Guest Editorial by: Zakiyah Ansari and Victoria Bousquet, parents
July 10, 2007
New York Daily News
We live across the street from each other, and there is a middle school five minutes from our front doors, yet neither of our children goes there. Instead, they travel by bus or train to get to school.
We would love to send them to the local school, but we were concerned they would fall behind and be unprepared to succeed in high school and beyond.
One thing that worried us was that the school didn't have a functioning science lab, especially after we learned that children in schools without labs score 10 points lower on the eighth-grade science exam on average than at schools with labs. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Kids do better in schools with resources.
Unfortunately, the lack of adequate science labs isn't just a problem in our neighborhood. Today, scores of middle schools have no science labs.
This is about to change, at least in Brooklyn, because of the work of parents across the borough. Three years ago, parents, community groups and teachers throughout Brooklyn formed the Brooklyn Educational Collaborative (BEC), an organization dedicated to improving schools from the ground up.
After two years of organizing parents, studying data, meeting with city officials at all levels and conducting rallies, press events and public hearings, our voices were heard. In April, the Department of Education announced a new $444 million commitment to ensure that every middle school in the city has a fully functioning science lab by 2010.
By bringing a science lab to every middle school, we'll better prepare students for the eighth-grade science test and will now have the physical infrastructure in the classroom for advanced-level science teaching to occur. We didn't just win science labs - we struck a blow against a fundamental inequity in New York City's public schools.
But there's a bigger lesson here - a lesson about how schools in every neighborhood can improve and change if parents take the lead. The organizations at our core - ACORN, Cypress Hills Advocates for Education and the Brooklyn UFT Parent Outreach Committee - came together three years ago in response to the dismal outcomes in many of our neighborhood schools and to achieve greater equity in resources. Eventually, we zeroed in on middle grades and on science as our first organizing campaign.
A year ago, BEC joined with parent and community groups from across the city to build the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) - a coalition dedicated to combating the inequities in middle schools in all five boroughs. The problem isn't just in Brooklyn. Across the city, schools in low-income neighborhoods of color tend to have the least experienced teachers and the least challenging and rigorous course offerings. Because of our advocacy, two CEJ parent leaders now sit on the City Council's Task Force on Middle Grade Education, expected to release its recommendations in the next few weeks. The Education Department has made a commitment to us to implement the recommendations in a minimum of 50 low-performing middle schools.
The bottom line is that education reform can't come only from the top. When parents, teachers and community members put their heads together, we can win concrete victories to improve the schools in our neighborhoods and stamp out inequities citywide. It's also a victory for a new kind of parental involvement. And we're just getting started.
The real victory will be when parents and community members are taken seriously at every level of the school system and invited into the decision-making. BEC and CEJ will keep speaking out until all schools are great schools, and we hope many more parents, community groups and other organizations will join with us.
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