Presidential Perspectives
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No Simple Solution |
In the 14th century a Franciscan friar named William of Occam developed a theory, now known as Occam’s razor, which states that “if all things are equal, the simplest solution is often the right one.” Considering that principle, one has to wonder what Occam would think of the federal government’s failure to engage American higher education, especially urban and metropolitan universities, in its strategies to save our failing public K-12 schools in urban environments around the country.
Too often, higher education’s role in working with K-12 has been defined within the narrow limits of the traditional offerings of the academy – through the training of new teachers and the research and innovation of our faculty. While both are vital to the success of public education, they represent only a portion of the academy’s full potential to solve some of the tougher issues facing urban school districts.
In my judgment, metropolitan universities have the potential to be the most influential institutions in advanced societies. Their civic mission, societal role and extraordinary human resources provide a unique opportunity to contribute powerfully to meaningful change in society. Others have made similar observations about the potential of higher education. At the turn of the 20th century, William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago, identified the urban “Great University” as the most strategic-organizational innovation of modern society and believed that urban universities had a special role in advancing urban K-12 education. Other leaders, including former Harvard president Derrick Bok, have made similar observations and have called for universities to rethink their role in the preparation of teachers as well as their responsibilities to address issues in urban school districts.
Becoming involved with public school districts in ways that are congruent with the mission of a metropolitan university is not a simple matter. Take, for example, the work of Widener University and the Chester-Upland School District (CUSD). In 1994, CUSD was identified by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the worst-performing school district in the state and has not gotten better over the past decade. By 2006-07, only 9% of all 11th grade students passed the state-wide proficiency test in language arts and only 3% passed the math proficiency test.
As an independent, metropolitan, doctoral-granting university with 6,500 students and 1500 employees, Widener is an anchor institution in the City of Chester that in recent years has become increasingly involved in the school district. In 2005, after years of frustration from changing district priorities and revolving leadership, Widener decided to take a dramatic step and was one of the first universities in the country to open it own charter school. What is unique about our approach is that we have developed a true community partnership school which utilizes faculty and students from a myriad of academic programs at the University, including education, social work, and clinical psychology, to address the needs of the families with children enrolled in the school.
As you might guess, this approach has been praised by some and condemned by others. While we expected healthy community debates about the appropriateness of a university’s sponsoring a charter school, what we didn’t anticipate was the lack of any real coordination at the state or federal level to help us find an appropriate avenue for assisting our failing school district.
To address this void (which I am convinced exists is far more urban areas than just our own), I encourage CUMU to urge the Obama administration to charge an intergovernmental commission including representatives from the Department of Education, HUD, NSF, and the Corporation for National Service along with members from CUMU to create a new strategy for supporting and encouraging universities to engage in the difficult task of reforming urban education. Yes, this would be an enormous undertaking but our current approaches are simply not enough.
If we are to truly have a positive and lasting impact on K-12 education in the 21st century, we should encourage a myriad of models and reward universities for their innovation, especially since they are uniquely poised to research and assess the impact of those innovations. Otherwise another generation of children in underperforming urban school districts will be lost. That is something America cannot tolerate from a human perspective—nor afford from a financial and global perspective-- and why we can no longer remain neutral. As the historian George Kennan once observed, “History will not excuse the inadequacy of the response due to the enormity of the challenge.”
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