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Revive the Dream Recruiting Session on June 2, 2013

One organization I work with is having a happy hour and recruiting session next week on Tuesday June 2, 2013.  Email me at info@jeremycwilson.com if you are interested in attending and becoming a Fellow.  Hope to see you there.

The RTD mission is: “To revive the American dream for underserved children. The program recruits emerging community leaders and develop them into education reform catalysts to improve the life prospects of millions of underserved American children.”

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Revive the Dream Happy Hour

Please join us for a Revive the Dream (RTD) happy hour /  Information session on Tuesday, July 2nd from 6-9 PM, at Citizen Bar.

Learn about the mission of RTD and how you can get involved.  Also, Mike Rosskamm, RTD’s founder and a charter school principal will speak about the importance of getting involved in urban education.

We recruit ~20 fellows from outside the education world who we then train for 10 months about how to have an impact (1 two-hour session per month).  After the training, fellows will be partnered with local education organizations for at least a year and help those organizations improve through activities like board service, project management, and fund-raising.

Training with RTD revolves around interactive sessions with leading education practitioners.  A few of them will be on hand at the event to answer questions about the current state of education both in Chicago and across the country.

Join us on Tuesday the 2nd to learn more or if you can’t make it, visit our website at RTDInstitute.org

Tags: education, EducationMatters

Race and College Admissions

Some time this month, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on a case that could further restrict the use of race as a factor in college admissions.  The issue is whether a student’s race or ethnicity can factor into admissions decisions.

There are many arguments to support why considering race is important, notably the legal rationale of correcting past wrongs.  But there are also others who argue that affirmative action does not work or that using economic status will do far more to help.

Ten years ago, the court’s stance is that student diversity is a compelling interest that can justify the use of race, but only as one among many factors.  A recent NY Times  article discusses the updoming decision.

The biggest obstacle to class-based affirmative action, as Richard Perez-Pena pointed out in The Times the other day, is the obvious one: cost. Poor and working-class students are by definition in need of more financial aid. That is why universities have shown little interest in switching. It’s cheaper to bring in students of color from middle-class or affluent families. (It also brings in kids with higher SAT test scores, which count so heavily in the obsessively watched college rankings.) Cost is the reason that even many proponents of class-based affirmative action favor what Tienda calls “a holistic approach” — class and race both.

Head nod to Bill Keller for surfacing this important issue in his article yesterday.

Tags: Diversity, education, EducationMatters

2013 Princeton Prize Race Relations Event and my Keynote Remarks

There is perhaps no greater challenge facing our country than the pursuit of equality.  From gender, to socio-economic background, to color to race, the challenges we face not only exist today but have existed for hundreds of years.  Princeton and its alumni recognize that the issue of race relations continues to be urgent and recently started the Princeton Prize Race Relations to tackle the challenge of race. The event in Chicago was organized by friend and colleague Marquis Parker.

The mission of the Princeton Prize is “To promote harmony, understanding, and respect among people of different races by identifying and recognizing high school age students whose efforts have had a significant, positive effect on race relations in their schools or communities.” 

The Princeton Prize in Race Relations consists of regionally awarded $1,000 cash awards as well as an annual symposium on race.

The event took place yesterday and I was fortunate to be invited.  Not only did I meet the high school award winners, support the Princeton community in Chicago and talk about Education Matters but I also gave the keynote address, which was on Race Relations as I see it today.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”  The first words of the preamble and an early quote in my remarks. I spoke about many topics, from the town halls of Philadelphia PA where the constitution was written, to the DREAM’ers not given the chance to go to college even though they were born in the United States, to our responsibility to stand up and disagree not just on the streets but also in the classrooms and courtrooms, to the professional challenges of race today. I also told my own story – how I am the son of two adopted parents.  Neither my mother or my father knows the exact color of their parents skin or what countries their ancestors came from – and ended  with a piece of advice to the winners: understand how much #EducationMatters  in this process.

But more important than those remarks were the wonderful efforts of the 4 award winners in attendance.  HERE is the video of this year’s winner, which was posted before the event. But all 4 students at the event were incredibly remarkable. They have businesses that reach all over the world and were very impressive in front of the room to only be 16 and 17 years old.

Tags: College, education, EducationMatters