Remarks by
Ruth J. Simmons
President, Brown University

Empowerment and Education
National Urban League Luncheon
Noon, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Westin Hotel

Thank you, Dr. Recupero. Good afternoon, Governor Carcieri and Lieutenant Governor Fogarty; Mayor Cicilline and Mayor Laffey.

And greetings to all of the distinguished guests of the Urban League of Rhode Island here present this afternoon.
On behalf of all my colleagues at Brown, I congratulate this afternoon’s award recipients.

I am intrigued with the topic of this afternoon’s event: Empowerment. Of course, every educator seeks empowerment of their students, and we at Brown are no different. I must confess that empowerment can sometimes go too far, though. Like the time that students came to me to say they were holding a demonstration at noon on the Green and they wanted me to join their demonstration against the administration at Brown! But such a minor detail never impedes the truly empowered!

Empowerment is that accumulation of self-confidence and fearlessness that flows naturally from learning. This confidence can come from mastering a series of specific tasks or problems, but it also derives from the knowledge that whatever happens, you can figure out how to solve the most intractable problem. The ultimate expression of empowerment is action itself. The empowered person says, “I think this is possible and I will try to make it happen, but even if I can’t make it happen this way, I will find my way to another solution.”

The founders of our nation were empowered. The civil rights movement was empowered, running on the individual and collective empowerment of many. The impossible was made possible by the collective faith, will and action of many.

Those who are empowered live for the empowerment of others. At a recent luncheon on our campus, I sat between Marian Wright Edelman and Sister Mary Reilly, founder of Dorcas Place. Wow. These women have been looking to empower women across the decades, making possible innumerable achievements by others: women on the margin, women without an education, children on the margin, children without legal rights. Giving these women and children the sense that their basic needs are important and worthy of the attention of society is evidence of an empowering leadership that society urgently needs. The inner confidence that these two leaders displayed in setting ambitious agendas not just for themselves but for everyone around them speaks to the power and reach of the empowered person. And it didn’t matter whether it involved crayons and paper in kindergarten or high-level policy making. Empowerment seeks out the most meaningful tasks, rather than the merely visible ones, infusing them with meaning and compelling an outcome.

Empowerment is a very popular and powerful concept. If you had Googled the term last week, you would have found something on the order 56.4 million “how-to” Internet files that discuss the concept. We all share the belief — and we know from experience — that empowered, confident people will move ahead, will lead, will innovate, will help build and repair society. It is a commodity that everyone wants. Parents want it for their children; grandparents want it for their grandchildren.

My parents wanted the opposite for me in the Jim Crow South. There, it was DANGEROUS for a black person to be empowered. But in spite of the fact that my parents taught me to be deferential and modest and self-abnegating, as soon as I was freed of the constraints of Jim Crow, I was able to claim that empowerment and claim it proudly. Schools did that for me, and I know from experience that education can be one of the most dependable pathways to achieving the kind of empowerment that transforms society, undergirds our civic responsibility, and preserves the best about our democracy.

That is why so much of the news about our schools — particularly our urban schools — stops us in our tracks and commands our attention. These are not merely figures that represent the performance of schools or the achievement of educational standards. Behind these numbers are the individual lives and futures of young people about whom we care deeply.

You know the kind of news I am talking about:

· One-third of all ninth graders will not graduate from high school.

· “Public school students across the nation are increasingly segregated by race, poverty, and educational opportunity,” cites the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

· Fewer than one in five black and Latino students nationwide attend schools where less than 30 percent of the students are poor. This, according to a study titled Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality.

· Rhode Island Kids Count tells us that last year, almost one out of every four students in Rhode Island core cities missed more than 20 days of school.

· And, according to the 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress, only 41 percent of low-income fourth graders in Rhode Island scored at or above basic understanding in reading proficiency, compared to 74 percent of fourth graders from higher-income families.

I could cite other statistics that point toward gaps between urban and suburban test takers or between students who receive free or reduced-cost lunch and those who do not. This kind of relentlessly common data is not news. At times, I fear we as a nation have become inured to these data about poorly performing schools, low achievement, and performance gaps across race and class. We have grown numb to the growing list of those left behind.

Empowered citizens can never permit this numbness to overtake them. If our educational system is sliding toward separate and unequal outcomes, we must reverse that trend — and the “we” I have in mind here comprises the entire nation. We will all pay dearly for injustice and our own inaction when we produce generations of youth unable to meet the challenges of a very complex world. All of our children will be severely disadvantaged if the doors to achievement are open only to the fortunate few.

As I speak to different audiences about education and the issues that confront educators, I am asked how I would proceed or what I would recommend. I know that different states, different cities and different schools must work together to develop solutions for their unique circumstances. However, I often find myself speaking about three areas of general concern in addressing this problem.

The first is the underlying principle of education in a democracy. The No Child Left Behind Act has a great many critics, but it has made a substantial contribution in at least one area. It has established unequivocally that our nation has an absolute obligation to educate all children to very high standards. That is a crucially important principle and can be the starting point for effective action. It is not enough to hope that a few high-performing schools will raise a state’s average. We are accountable for the performance of each school in every community.

The second is funding. While the No Child Left Behind Act is a federal initiative, the bulk of funding for most schools comes from the state and local level. Across the country, states and cities are working to devise funding formulae that are equitable and effective. Those efforts can only improve over time, as school and government officials deepen their understanding of the actual needs and costs involved in bringing all students to desired levels of knowledge and skill. But there is also the parallel need to develop broad-based, enlightened public support. We need to work ceaselessly and creatively to build a culture and a community that insists upon having the resources necessary to prevent educational failure. If we come to understand that a just society is one that makes the investments necessary to meet appropriate performance mandates for our children, we will have achieved a great deal.

The third is teachers. Teaching is a difficult, rewarding and noble profession. As parents and citizens, we charge the nation’s teachers with tremendous responsibility and entrust them with our children, a treasure of incomparable importance. Yet, in many areas, teachers begin their jobs without the necessary skills to achieve the desired results. I look forward to a time when the requirements to become a teacher are comparable to those we demand of many other professions, and when educators are honored and compensated in a way that is commensurate with the responsibility of the post and the preparation it requires. Good teachers — the best teachers — also need access to ongoing, high-quality, relevant professional development.

The authors of a new study, titled Making Good on a Promise, analyzed data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, a research effort that selected a representative group of about 25,000 eighth-graders in 1988 and tracked them for 12 years — until 2000, when the students had reached their mid-20s.

The paper took aim at several common misconceptions that have become part of the conventional wisdom about high school dropouts — misconceptions, I like to think, that are born partly from a despairing reaction to the drumbeat of bad news. For example:

· The dropout problem is confined to a small group of highly unmotivated young people who are poor. Not true. The dropout problem may be concentrated in central cities and low-income communities, but it is not confined solely to the urban poor. About 20 percent of all high school students drop out, according to the study, including 10 percent of young people in the two highest socioeconomic levels. This is a national problem that is widespread; it needs a national response.

· Dropping out is a problem of disaffected black and Hispanic central-city youth. Not true. Based on data from the longitudinal study, black and Hispanic youth are no more likely to drop out of high school than their white non-Hispanic peers from similar family income and educational backgrounds, according to the data analysis of the authors. It is neither race nor ethnicity but low-income status that correlates with a higher dropout rate.

· There is little to be done for students who drop out of high school. Also not true. Close to 60 percent of high school dropouts eventually earn a high school credential, most often in the form of a GED certificate. Nearly half of those students who do secure a high school credential — 44 percent, according to the study — later enroll at a two- or a four-year college. Socioeconomic status plays a role here as well, but educational persistence occurs among high school dropouts at all income levels.

It was that last point about educational persistence that caught my eye — possibly because it speaks to the quest for empowerment I discussed earlier in my remarks. Education, it seems, remains a well-recognized and effective portal to the way forward. It has its own incentives and offers its own rewards.

The authors of the study urge our society to recognize educational persistence and to facilitate the aspirations of these young people who, having dropped out of school, are now returning to complete their high school to work and possibly to continue their education. Creating new efforts at outreach, building new avenues to resumed education, opening new means to enter programs of postsecondary education — these are important and compelling goals for our society.

Even when the news is not good, when the evidence of educational failure and difficulty seems to accumulate all around us, it is possible to find individual leadership and social resources from which to plot a course of action that may lead to a definitive solution.

No one who is privileged, as I am, to observe young people at close range in an educational setting can possibly miss the enthusiasm, initiative and purpose that come with learning. This is true day in and day out on the campus of Brown University, but it happens wherever students learn.

It is happening at Dillard University, which, after the loss of its campus to Hurricane Katrina, reassembled in January in the Hilton Hotel to hold classes and begin anew. For the victims of Hurricane Katrina, education is not a place on the hill; it is wherever students and teachers assemble, will-ing to do the hard work of teaching and learning.

I take great inspiration from seeing young people learn. It replenishes my belief in the transformative power of education. It fires my indignation and anger at the inequalities that persist in our society and at the notion that any child should receive less than our best effort. But above all, seeing young people learn reinforces my conviction that education is the way for-ward to empowerment, and it steels my resolve that the multitude of chal-lenges facing our schools must be met.

We have important work to do, and I thank the Urban League for having played a prominent role nationally in bringing this message to the public. Supporting organizations like the Urban League is one way to broader empowerment of our children. Another is for the message from public officials to be one of respect and concern for the broadest spectrum of citizens. I am pleased to live in Rhode Island where there is respect for the many ways in which cultures thrive and transform. No child is empowered when the government that represents him or her denigrates the very foundation of their identity. Thank you, Governor Carcieri and Mayor Cicilline, for setting such an example for our children. In these times, we should not take for granted the value of inclusive, ethical leadership.

Finally, let me add that empowerment dances cheek to cheek with courage, a rare phenomenon in our time. The courage to challenge prevailing practices. The courage to challenge powerful people. The courage to protect human rights gains. The courage to preserve hard-fought constitutional rights.

Empowerment can atrophy when not used. What good is it if we bring it out to look at it and marvel at its existence. It grows stronger with use. I applaud the efforts of our awardees to exercise their empowerment – in the interest of our children, in the interest of society, in the interest of justice.
Thank you.