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Throughout September, NCLR will be highlighting education and NCLR’s programs with our “Spotlight on Education Excellence.”
Each week, we’ll bring you information about some of NCLR’s core education programs, as well as commentary on the state of education in the United States. We start this week with a look at the Common Core State Standards movement (CCSS), better known as “common standards.” This movement is a voluntary, state-led initiative designed to establish a clear set of educational standards for K-12 English language arts and math. You can read more about common standards here.
Here is the reality: despite being a large and growing share of the U.S. student population, only 56% of Latino students graduate with a regular diploma, compared to 77% of their White peers. This stark disparity leaves a disproportionate number of Latinos unprepared for college and unqualified for good jobs. If things don’t change, Latinos will not have the same opportunities to buy a house, afford health insurance, or send their own kids to college. This is unacceptable—and changing it will require a bold, strategic, and concerted effort from our elected officials down to our grassroots advocates.
NCLR recognized this need early on and quickly worked to highlight the benefits of common standards for the Latino community. Part of its work has included membership in Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE), a coalition of civil rights groups that are invested in improving education for all students, particularly for students of color.
NCLR’s efforts also include the development of materials for advocates, parents, and education officials, all of whom are tasked with providing the very best education experience our children deserve. If the common standards movement was going to be successful, especially in the Latino community, we needed to do three things: provide ample and substantive education to communities about the benefits of common standards, turn those community members into advocates for the common standards movement, and create materials that those advocates could use when lobbying education decision makers.
The first was achieved through a series of convenings held around the country, and in coordination with CHSE, as well as at the NCLR Annual Conferences. After we provided the education and achieved a subsequent buy-in, we quickly started working on two different documents that would help us meet our second and third goals. Last spring, NCLR unveiled Access to Common Standards for All: An Advocacy Tool Kit for Supporting Success. This tool kit was designed to help education reform champions build stronger, more effective strategies to ensure educational success for Latino and English Language Learner students and their families. It provides a step-by-step guide for grassroots reformers to develop an advocacy plan from start to finish and it also includes several resources to help support those efforts. The tool kit is a must-have guide for anybody interested in improving education in their own community. You can download a copy of the tool kit here.
All of this work is moot, however, if state and local education officials never hear how we think common standards should be implemented. To that end, NCLR has developed a common standards implementation guide (currently in the design phase) which is aimed at local and state officials. Once our advocates have used the tool kit to create a robust and effective strategy, they will be ready to start lobbying on behalf of their community with the comprehensive implementation guide that local and state officials can use as they consider the best ways to implement common standards.
Both the tool kit and the implementation guide are essential resources for the Latino community as we all work together to reform the American education system and make it—once again—the model for all education systems in the world.