Administrators must develop partnerships with parents and community members to enlist their assistance in student engagement. Organizations such as Teach for America, an outfit that places recent college graduates like my daughter into high-poverty, low-achieving schools, is another important part of the mix, getting our best and brightest to teach 600,000 students this year. And businesses, large and small, need to expand collaborative efforts on issues ranging from curriculum development to institutional management.
We have a huge stake in the development of our students–regardless of whether we are parents or have kids attending public schools. They represent our nation’s future workforce and leadership. In fact, one of my personal charges as a coach is making sure that “my boys†gain every academic advantage available to them. In one such case, I took a Cameroonian exchange student into my home for a summer not only because he was a great athlete but because he represented young people at their best: respectful, talented, intelligent, and fluent in three languages. Still learning to comprehend English, he initially scored poorly on his College Boards not because he wasn’t smart, but rather he had not received the test preparation that is a given for privileged students in this country. As a result, this brilliant student—athlete could have been denied scholarship opportunities to attend top-notch colleges and universities. From that point on, I made it my mission to ensure that he would get the equivalent training and support that my own children received in order to be considered for scholarship and placement opportunities.
It takes that level of commitment to ensure our kids aren’t shortchanged. We must remember that most of us would not have achieved our current status without advocates, mentors, and sponsors who gave us access to opportunities. Given the enormous challenges that lie ahead, we can ill afford not to reach back and help the next generation get its best shot at professional success and prosperity.