For the first time in my 12 years as an educator, I can finally say to my students, “You can be anything you want, even president of the United States.”
Now that the emotional months of the presidential campaign and election are behind us, we should continue to harness this collective energy to address America’s urgent challenges, beginning with our education system. I urge President-elect Barack Obama to unite the country around improving schools by focusing on three key areas:
• We must strengthen the teaching profession to bring more talented people into the field, and improve the mentoring and training they get once in the classroom. I started in education in 1996 as a teacher in Houston through Teach For America, which recruits college graduates to work for two years in underserved schools. In 2002, I founded KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Sunshine Peak Academy, a charter middle school where 90 percent of our students qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program, yet consistently outperform other students in Southwest Denver.
This year, there are 125 Teach For America teachers working with 8,000 students in Denver, and 200 alumni living here who, like me, are starting charter schools and leading education innovation in the community. We should learn from the success of Teach For America and increase the alternative pipelines that attract high-quality teachers to Denver.
• Obama needs to urge school districts to provide equitable facilities for high-performing charter schools. Last month, the El Pomar Foundation recognized KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy with an “Award of Excellence” for our academic results, yet we have no space for physical education, music or theater classes. Now that the charter has been approved for the first KIPP high school in Denver, I am excited to be part of an unprecedented facility-sharing arrangement that will allow students equitable access to space for extracurricular activities, which will enrich KIPP’s outstanding academic program.
• I hope that Obama will appoint a secretary of Education who can run the Department of Education as a strong chief academic and executive officer. Although federal dollars only account for a small portion of the school budget here in Denver and across the country, a secretary of Education with both classroom and business savvy could take on politically challenging priorities, such as the creation of national standards and assessments. With one national standard for what children should learn at each grade level, we could prevent the range of rigor that currently exists, where states like Massachusetts have clear, high standards, while we in Colorado have less challenging targets.
Obama sent Americans a message on Election Day: It’s not about me; it’s about you. Our children are powerless on their own. They need the advocacy of engaged, passionate and committed adults to bring the change we need to our schools. By working together to create a competitive, high-performing, and equitable public education system, we have the potential to turn “Yes, we can” into “Yes, we will.”
Rich Barrett is founder of KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy charter middle school and a Fisher Fellow in training to open the first KIPP high school in Denver, KIPP Denver Collegiate High School in 2009.
