President Obama speaks to students at Viers Mill Elementary School in Silver Spring, MD, a school that has substantially closed its achievement gap. (photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Newscom)

As American Promise heats up on Kickstarter, the urgency of our film and campaign was thrown into sharp relief Tuesday as the New York Times reported that black students, especially boys, face much harsher discipline in public schools than other students. “The undeniable truth is that the everyday education experience for too many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the AMERICAN PROMISE,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told reporters.

Elsewhere in education news, the Supreme Court will again look at affirmative action in an upcoming case involving admissions to the University of Texas. Washington State announced that it will focus its No Child Left Behind waivers on a new strategy to close achievement gaps there. The CNN In America blog wonders whether black male teachers are becoming extinct. Meanwhile, studies from Stanford and the University of Michigan assert that class is a bigger factor in achievement gaps than race.

We’ve raised over $40,000 – and we have just 5 days left to reach our goal of $50,000. Our Kickstarter campaign has been featured on the Sundance Institute Blog, Ground Control Parenting, what (not) to doc, Kenneth in the (212), Loop21 and ebogjonson – and this week, Michele’s guest-blogging for Ebony Mom Politics.

This comes amidst the amazing news that a donor will provide 1:1 matching funds for every Kickstarter contribution made during the last 2 weeks of the campaign, which ends March 14th. That means your $10 will be worth $20; your $100 will be $200 – your support will go even further in helping us assemble this revelatory 12-year film.

Join us today to claim your special reward – and THANK YOU to all those who have contributed and have been spreading the word…

The response from the audience of parent advocates was overwhelming. Many parents recognized their children’s experiences onscreen. Several expressed how refreshing it was to see middle class stories of black male achievement brought to light and reflect the complexity of the African American experience today. After the presentation, we got a great deal of interest in arranging grassroots screening events at BAEO chapters around the country.

We also learned more about the work of BAEO throughout the three-day Symposium. This year, the Symposium was combined with BAEO’s Annual Seminar for Educational Policy and Parental Choice for elected officials, bringing together grassroots groups and policymakers for an empowering discussion. Highlights included an in-depth examination of the success of black-led charter schools, and new teaching strategies for closing the achievement gap.

Our sincere thanks to BAEO for including American Promise in this vital, ongoing discussion of how to ensure all parents have access to excellent educational options for their children.

(Visit our Kickstarter page and check out our update video from the BAEO Symposium)

Still photo from Haiti: One Day, One Destiny

We’re thrilled that Haiti: One Day, One Destiny is now playing in the short documentary program of the 20th Annual Pan African Arts & Film Festival in Los Angeles.  Don’t miss the next screening: Friday, Feb 17@1:15pm

In the aftermath of Haiti’s January 12, 2010 earthquake, Michèle Stephenson set out to tell the stories of the rebuilding efforts from the perspective of Haitian people, in their own words. The short film and web series Haiti: One Day, One Destiny (blackpublicmedia.org) is the product of Stephenson’s 10-day journey through Haiti after the quake. Through this mosaic of stories, the multi-platform project gives voice to the direct experiences and perseverance of Haitians from all walks of life. We meet Haitians working to rebuild their communities, and gain insight into the historical and spiritual journey of the country.

Learn more about the festival and get your tickets at http://2012.paff.org

From Right: Ann Curry, Colton Bradford, Shadrack Boyake, Stephanie Torres and Nnamdi Asomugha on the panel "Voice of a Generation: Students Speak Out"

“2011 has been the year of what they call the Arab Spring,” Phillip Jackson told the panel Stepping Up: The Power of the Parent Advocate at Education Nation. “2011 must also become the year of the American Parent Fall – this fall.”

As demonstrators began gathering in the financial district several blocks south, Jackson told the Rockefeller Center crowd about parent movements in Chicago. In the past decade, parents have taken over the failing Nettlehorst elementary school, and the Latino “Whittier parents” who staged a sit-in for a new library and engaged in a hunger strike to force the government to build the new high school their community of Little Village was promised.

Jackson is an education policy veteran, having served as Chief of Staff of Chicago Public Schools, Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Housing Authority and Chief of Education for the City of Chicago. Now, he is founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Black Star Project. “Now, parents must take over schools.”

The Black Star Project began in 1996 with a mission to eliminate the racial achievement gap by providing support for entire families and communities.

The achievement gap was a frequent subject at NBC News’ second annual Education Nation summit convened in New York City last week. The inseparable impact of poverty on education and the effectiveness of whole-community services also emerged as clear themes during the 3-day gathering.

Sharing the panel with Jackson, education journalist Peg Tyre (author, The Trouble With Boys) expressed the concern that some parents may not be informed enough to play such an active role. “We’re asking a lot of parents and not giving them the right tools to make sure they are making good decisions,” Tyre said.

In California, Texas and Mississippi, the new “Parent Trigger” law allows parents to fire teachers and administration and restructure their children’s’ school with a 51% majority vote, explained panelist Ben Austin, Executive Director of the Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution. The law is drawing criticism, but “the bigger problem,” Austin said, “is that parents are asking questions that no one in this room knows the answer to.”

Bill Clinton, offered the public school system as a “lump of clay” by NBC News’ Brian Williams, said he would fund schools equally at the state level rather than the current local property tax funding system, which perpetuates inequality.

Panelists universally praised the effectiveness of providing “wraparound services” for parents and families, especially from birth to age five, noting their potential to close achievement gaps. Many noted that these programs are routinely under funded.

Speakers also remarked on the economically strategic role of U.S.’s growing population of school-aged young people. “For all of you that worry about America’s long term debt, that should make you feel good because Social Security is going to be about a twenty-five year problem, after which the demographics will level up again,” said Clinton.

Urban sociologist and education researcher Pedro Noguera (author, The Trouble With Black Boys) put it another way. “It’s increasingly going to be minority children, black and brown children who will be supporting elderly white people through Social Security,” he said during the panel What’s In A ZIP Code? A Look at Inequality Across Our Public Schools.

The panel The Changing Face of Education was devoted to the special challenges facing the education of Latino children, who are a growing demographic in U.S. public schools across the country. These challenges include getting the system to prioritize bilingual education, and ending the disempowerment experienced by undocumented parents, according to Los Angeles Public Schools Superintendent John Deasy.

“I don’t think we have a 70% dropout rate, we have a pushout rate,” Deasy said. “I am seeing students systematically sorted out and pushed out,”

One such student who felt pushed out was Stephanie Torres, 22, of New York City, part of a fascinating panel called “Voice of a Generation: Students Speak Out.” Torres dropped out of high school because she says she felt so little support from family and teachers alike. “Now, I use newspaper articles and anything I can to educate myself,” she said, because she couldn’t afford a GED class.

Shadrack Boayke, 21, a Long Island college student originally from Liberia, told of his work at Youth Enrichment Services with students who had a similar experience as Torres.

Boayke echoed older voices from the summit as he gave an example of the power of presenting education experiences at the whole-community level:

“Instead of teaching kids the curriculum, we bring a reflection of society to kids, to let them see where they are and where they’re going” if they continue as school dropouts.  “We speak to them, we relate to them. From there, we’ll bring them to activities. They see what they’re missing. They see the possibilities of staying in.”

As David Aguilar writes for the Associated Press, the study, “Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among White, Black, Hispanic and Asian American Children” “was touted by researchers as the first national study to focus exclusively on children’s media use by race and ethnicity.”

The study measured media consumption of all types, including TV, music, video games, internet, movies and mobile web devices.

Among the other revelations: minority youth are twice as likely as their white counterparts to access the web on a mobile device, Asian American youth spend more time online than other groups, and Black and Latino youth are more likely to eat meals with the TV on.

The average time spent reading for pleasure was the same across all four groups – an average of 30 to 40 minutes per day, the study found.

Read the full report here

In the past four weeks, the New York Times has examined the surreal admissions experience for parents and kids in two different articles that hi-light the stratification that city residents experience, based on their economic circumstances.

On April 18th, Jenny Anderson reported on the high-priced consultants who help “unconnected” parents position their kids for a better chance of admission at the most renowned private prep schools in the city.

Last weekend, Liz Robbins chronicled the byzantine experience of the New York Public Schools high school choice program through the eyes of a handful of the 8,239 eighth graders who were not matched with any of their chosen high schools in the first round.

Eighth graders rank their top fifteen high school choices, from which the high schools select from the pool of students – without knowing where the student has ranked their school on their list. This year, after the computer runs its calculations, about 10% of eighth graders were not chosen by any of the schools they selected.

Among them, Radcliffe Saddler of Brooklyn:

ON the last day in March, when most eighth graders in New York City learned where they would be going to high school in the fall, Radcliffe Saddler watched the majority of his classmates rip open thin envelopes and celebrate.

Some students opened thick envelopes just as he did and started crying. Radcliffe, an honors student at Isaac Bildersee Middle School in Canarsie, Brooklyn, was determined to hold in his emotions until he got home.

His trip involved the usual two city buses and took 45 minutes. When he walked into his family’s small apartment in East Flatbush, he showed his mother the letter saying he had not gotten into any of the nine schools he had applied to. Then he ducked into his room and cried.

“I felt like I never worked hard enough,” Radcliffe, 14, said softly a few days later. “To see other people get in, I feel like I did something wrong.”

**

Mr. Sanft said there was no one answer to why so many of the city’s children were unmatched. “It could be a combination of factors,” he said, “listing too few choices, overconfidence at reaching the choices for which they might not have qualified, the information available based on their record.”

Despite hosting admissions fairs and offering application guidelines in the encyclopedic 534-page high school directory, which includes 647 programs at 394 schools, plus the nine specialized schools, the department has acknowledged it needs to make its information more accessible to parents. Claudette Saddler, Radcliffe’s mother, said she had been overwhelmed by the process.

“This is like a big maze and you are the little creatures just walking around,” Ms. Saddler said. “It’s like, ‘Somebody please help me.’ I thought it would be simpler for the parents”

Aiming High to Succeed

The Saddlers stand in the middle of the socioeconomic divide in New York City, between the obsessive upper-middle-class parents who fill out spreadsheets to chart their children’s admissions and the uninvolved parents who leave it to guidance counselors to complete the forms.

Radcliffe is the oldest of three boys. Ms. Saddler and her husband, also named Radcliffe Saddler, immigrated to the United States from Jamaica within the past 10 years in part because they wanted to provide a better (and less expensive) education for their children.

Mr. Saddler, a house painter and graphics designer, is struggling to find work and is considering returning to school to get his M.B.A. Ms. Saddler is not working while she finishes her bachelor’s degree.

In hindsight, the Saddlers know they made mistakes in the selection process. They said they had trouble arranging open-house visits around their schedules, but thought Radcliffe’s excellent grades at Isaac Bildersee — he had a 94.18 average in seventh grade — would suffice. But while Radcliffe scored 3.56 out of a possible 4.5 on his state math exam, he scored 2.94 in English; many of the schools he applied to wanted 3s or 4s.

Radcliffe’s first choice was Millennium High School in Manhattan, where 5,266 students applied for 150 spots. His ninth and last choice was the program for science and math at Midwood High School in Brooklyn.

His guidance counselor, Watson Mareus, was overloaded by working with more than 350 students. Radcliffe acknowledged that Mr. Mareus originally advised him to consider a broad range of schools, but it felt to him as if he were saying, “Don’t aim too high.”

“If we all didn’t aim high,” Radcliffe said, shrugging his shoulders, “where would we be?”

Mr. Mareus said in an interview that once Radcliffe submitted his list, signed by his parents, in December, it was not his place to change it.

Still, he said he was shocked when Radcliffe was shut out while students with below-average grades got into Midwood. “There was nothing I could tell the parents,” Mr. Mareus said. “I was baffled.”

Radcliffe was thrown into the so-called supplemental round, in which unmatched students had to select from a list of schools that still had spaces available. Some were new schools without track records, others were large neighborhood schools, and still others were on the city’s “schools in need of improvement” list. Families had until April 15 to return their new lists of choices to guidance counselors. Schools are now going through a second round of ranking, using the same criteria as in the first.

**

Some schools will eliminate a candidate based on poor attendance or on a record of more than 10 late days. Radcliffe had five absences and was late 19 times in seventh grade. He said he took the city bus alongside commuters who routinely pushed him aside in line and left him waiting for the next one. But neither he nor his parents realized they could explain his circumstances as an unofficial part of his application.

Even though a computer sorts the information, the process also involves a high degree of diligence and strategy from students, parents and guidance counselors, going beyond submitting raw data and showing raw potential.

**

At the supplemental-round fair, Radcliffe and his parents met Rashid Davis, the dynamic 40-year-old principal at P-Tech — Pathways in Technology — a new school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, backed by a $500,000 commitment from I.B.M. and an agreement with City College to offer an associate’s degree at the end of six years.

P-Tech gives priority to Brooklyn students and those who attend an information session. The day after the fair, the Saddlers attended a session for the school, which had 46 of 108 spaces open.

P-Tech is a prime example of the city’s recent investment in small schools that focus on career-oriented education while it closes larger, struggling schools. P-Tech and the Academy for Health Careers will be at Paul Robeson High School, which is being phased out because of poor performance (it had a 50 percent graduation rate last year).

In the new school, Radcliffe and his parents saw opportunity, and he made it his first choice. “It’s like the new baby coming around,” Radcliffe said of the city’s support. “They’re going to look after it.”

Two days after he submitted six new choices, Radcliffe was told by a teacher that he was in the running to be Isaac Bildersee’s valedictorian. “I felt that my work is paying off,” he said.

**

For the next three weeks, all any of these students, and the thousands like them across the city, can do is wait nervously for the computer to run its algorithms. They have completed the hard part — twice.

For Mr. and Ms. Saddler, however, the process has just begun. Their middle son, Theodore, is now a seventh grader.

“It’s going to be easier next year for my brother,” Radcliffe said, shaking his head. “This was an experience that I will never forget.”

The film premieres as part of “AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange” and the PBS World Channel (7pm & 12am) on January 12, which marks one year since the earthquake.

“I deliberately avoided the sensational stories from the earthquake with a simple goal of bearing witness to the day to day lives and struggles Haitians are facing in the aftermath of the quake,” Michele says.

Read the full interview here