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Home > Features > The National Forum: Renewal and Relief
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The National Forum: Renewal and Relief
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by Chiara, Coletti
Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs
The College Board
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| | National Forum 2002: Atlanta, Georgia
In 2001, the Forum was all about unity and improvisation. Faced with an NAACP boycott of the hotel where the forum was to be held, College Board staff scrambled to cobble together accommodations at other hotels in Denver. Then came the unthinkable surprise of September 11. Yet, despite paralyzed flight schedules and shrieking nerves, nearly 800 College Board members and staff improvised flights, swallowed hard, and made Forum 2001 happen.
This year in Atlanta -- the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King and the cradle of the civil rights movement -- more than 1,450 people celebrated Forum 2002 with a sense of renewal and relief. The written word -- in fact, the miracle of writing -- carried the day.
"It's fitting that we're meeting here in the South," said UVA dean of admission Jack Blackburn at the opening session on October 31, "because there is such a mystique about southern writers."
Moments later, the Advanced Placement Program's Ayeola Boothe Kinlaw introduced Dr. Henry Louis Gates, the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of Humanities at Harvard. He talked about being "the little black prince" in a school full of white kids, and he recounted his journey as a reader, starting with the urge to impress Brenda Kimmell, his grade-school crush and an insatiable reader; being influenced by his eighth-grade teacher, Mrs. Iverson, who insisted he read A Tale of Two Cities; and proceeding to his encounter with old Dell paperbacks about being black. "That separated me from Brenda and everyone at Piedmont Elementary School," he said.
He went on to trace the history of African Americans and literature. Although literacy was banned among the slaves in many parts of the South, more than 100 ex-slaves wrote extensive biographical accounts -- "slave narratives" -- mostly about how they had learned to read and write. So important was the correlation between freedom and literacy that "in the long and sad history of human slavery, African Americans are the only people who ever made a chronicle of their own slavery." They were determined to make it clear, Gates said, "that we, too, are a people of the book."
Gates, who vowed to live and die by affirmative action, acknowledged his debt to it, saying, "Without affirmative action I wouldn't have been able to get through the social filters of Yale."
Discussing the New SAT
On the second day, the much-awaited panel presentation, "An Overview of the New SAT," commenced before a standing-room audience. Freeman Hrabowski, the president of the University of Maryland: Baltimore County, opened the presentation by saying, "The SAT has set a very high national standard for a long time by requiring strong thinking and reasoning skills." He went on to say that the new SAT is likely to set an even higher standard by assessing writing and advanced algebra and placing a greater emphasis on critical reading.
Before calling on College Board Trustee panelists to speak about why they had joined in the unanimous vote to change the SAT, Hrabowski set the tone: "All of us -- educators from every level of the educational system -- should seize this moment of change and use it to unite around the common cause of ensuring that all students have the opportunity to meet this standard."
Eric Smith, superintendent of Anne Arundel County Schools in Annapolis, Maryland, identified four primary issues surrounding the new SAT: the belief that children at all levels should be offered rigorous, demanding course work; a tough evaluation of preparedness through school curriculum, since curriculum determines which students do well on the SAT; an assessment of states' abilities to support schools in poor communities ("Is it a reality that they don't have the money?"); and support of our teachers, allowing them to teach at the highest level, including the AP level.
Focused on the writing portion of the new SAT, William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid, began by saying that he came from a poor Boston neighborhood that neither fostered education in general nor writing in particular. "We have a disaster sitting out there in our country," he later said, stating that 95 percent of teachers say they believe that writing and research papers are all-important, but 60 percent never assign a paper of moderate length and 81 percent never assign a long paper.
Laura Bush Presents the 2002 Inspiration Awards
Next on the agenda was a presentation by First Lady Laura Bush to student and faculty representatives from the three outstanding high schools that received the College Board's 2002 Inspiration Award. After Laura Bush joined them, the students went to the podium one by one to explain what their schools and education meant to them.
Said Sarah Bauer, of Woodlake Union High School in the Central Valley of California, "When we learned that our high school won an Inspiration Award from the College Board, we were all very excited, but were also surprised to find that Woodlake was the eleventh poorest community in the state. Few of us knew that we were that poor because the expectation at Woodlake Union High School is one of success."
For Estefania Alves, of Jeremiah Burke High School in Boston, the love of education is sparked by loyalty to culture. She said, "I am a strong advocate for education because I come from Cape Verde, an island on the west coast of Africa, where many of our parents didn't even get through a middle school education, if any... Education is essential to me because I am a person of color. Often we are looked at as people who quit, so I feel it is my duty to prove those that think that wrong."
After all six students had spoken, a visibly moved first lady took the podium. Chair of the College Board Trustees Linda Clement presented Mrs. Bush with the College Board Medal for Distinguished Service to Education. Then, addressing the filled-to-capacity ballroom, Mrs. Bush offered her views on education and literacy, focusing particularly on her own project: "Through the Ready to Read, Ready to Learn initiative, I want to stress the importance of early childhood programs that prepare children for reading and learning long before they pick up a backpack... Programs that immerse children in prereading and vocabulary-building activities help children enter their first classroom ready to read and with a love of learning."
Referring to teaching as "the absolute profession, the one that makes all others possible," she went on to express her support for programs that will help to supplement the dwindling teaching ranks. She said, "I support programs that draw teaching candidates from nontraditional sources -- such as Teach for America. This program plans to recruit more than 18,000 teachers for our classrooms... Through Troops to Teachers, retiring military men and women are getting the training, certification, and support they need to move from the front lines to the front of the class as America's newest teachers."
She said there are no excuses for allowing children to fail. "Some use family situations, economic status, or language and learning difficulties to rationalize a child's lack of achievement," she said. "The president calls this 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.' Today, we must expect more from our children and from ourselves."
Meeting of the Members
Opening the annual Meeting of the Members the following morning, Chairwoman Clement introduced Shiloh High School sophomore Diana Degamo, who sang "Hero" with the bravura of a seasoned musical theater star. When all assembled regained their composure, Clement proceeded with the business of the meeting. Two hundred and twenty new institutions were voted in as members of the College Board. College Board president Gaston Caperton reminded members and staff about how much the world had changed since his first Forum in San Diego in 1999, when author Thomas L. Friedman was the keynote speaker.
Citing The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman's 1999 bestseller about globalization, Caperton recalled the air of economic and technological optimism that so many Americans breathed at the time of the San Diego Forum. A year later, at Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center and overlooking Wall Street, a more circumspect College Board membership celebrated Forum 2000. There were already signs that the dot-com bubble was bursting. By Forum 2001 in Denver, association members gathered together in defiance of the hatred that had just destroyed the World Trade Center. And now, at Forum 2002, Friedman seemed more relevant than ever as Caperton read several passages from Friedman's latest book, Longitudes and Attitudes, including:
"That is why one thing Americans have learned from September 11 is to treat our firemen and our policemen, our governing institutions and our regulators, with renewed respect. Because they protect and preserve the bedrock of our society -- our workplaces and our public schools."
"Recognizing our schools as the bedrock of our society is not new," said Caperton, as he went on to track America's incomplete education revolution through the aftermath of the Second World War, the era of the Truman Commission, the days of President Johnson's call for a Great Society, President Reagan's warning of a "Nation at Risk," and President Bush's exhortation to "Leave No Child Behind."
"At the College Board, we're fiercely proud of the part we've played in this revolution in education," he said. "But we're under no illusions: this revolution is unfinished. The challenge we now face at the College Board -- one that we have faced and met before -- is to lead the way to greater access and higher standards in higher education."
To bring about a lasting education revolution, he proposed to put a computer in every child's home, increase Pell Grants, triple the number of school counselors, and double the salary of every teacher in America. He said, "'Double teachers' salaries? How can we afford to pay the bill?' you ask. And I say, 'How can we afford not to pay the bill?'"
Chauncey Veatch: National Teacher of the Year
As if on cue, 2002 National Teacher of the Year Chauncey Veatch next took the stage. After 22 years in the United States Army, Veatch returned to his home in Palm Desert, California, in 1995 determined to try substitute teaching. Instantly, he was snatched up as a full-time eighth-grade teacher of everything from reading to physical education at John Kelley School in Thermal, California. Today he is a ninth-grade teacher at Coachella Valley High School in the same town.
"I'm glad I didn't know the environment of the school I entered," he said, reminiscing about his early days at John Kelley. "It was hemorrhaging teachers, financially bankrupt, under state receivership."
Suddenly, Veatch's speech turned into an elegy to his students: "Then I saw their names. The names of a people of destiny."
As he went on to elaborate about why his students are his heroes, the power of his love for them was manifest in the very cadence of his voice. "Each day, as school begins, I have a new gift: each child," he said, summing up for all 1,450 educators at Forum 2002 part of the meaning of their own lives.
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