In this edition of the Harvard EdCast, Powell reflects on his lasting commitment to improving education and shares his favorite Colin Powell quote.

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About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iTunes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.

In this edition of the Harvard EdCast, Martha Kanter, Ed.M.’74, under secretary of education, U.S. Department of Education, shares progress of President Obama’s 2020 College Graduation Goal and how to improve both college access and completion.

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Download the mp3: 2020 Vision

About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iTunes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.

For many, that is the takeaway message of Chocolate Me! the new children’s book written by actor Taye Diggs and author/ illustrator Shane Evans. The pair visited the Ed School last week to talk about their book, give a reading, and perform a song based on the title. They also answered questions about race and education during a discussion moderated by Lecturer Pamela A. Mason, M.A.T.’70, Ed.D.’75, director of the Language and Literacy Program.

Based on a poem Diggs wrote in college about growing up the only black child in a white neighborhood, Chocolate Me! is about feeling different and trying to fit in as children. “I didn’t quite know how to deal with it or [understand] what it was at age five,” Diggs said. “I remember that being my first lesson from my mom on self-esteem, loving who you are, and embracing differences.”

Diggs said that, as a child, it would have been nice to have books that helped him out, especially with the isolation of being the only black child in the neighborhood. It was his longtime friend Evans who eventually encouraged him to turn his poem into a children’s book, though it took nearly eight years to actually come to fruition. The word “chocolate” in the title is one that Diggs long used as a description of his skin. As Diggs explained to the audience, his father came up with the term “chocolate.”

“He never used the word black or negro or colored or African American, he would always say chocolate,” Diggs said. “When I was a young boy whenever he would get greeting cards with families on them, he would color in the faces ‘chocolate’ because they didn’t have black greeting cards. In my head growing up being black, I associated that with chocolate and …it’s positive. It’s sweet. It’s yummy. It’s delicious.”

Evans said that the book prompted a “verbal revolution” in his heart in which he now refers to people by flavor.

Growing up as an artist, Evans encountered similar problems to Diggs’ father. He said that the “flesh”- colored Crayon always threw. He used to think, “This is ridiculous, man,” he said.

Having children accept themselves and each other is not going to be an easy road, but Evans is proud of the small part that their book can play. “It’s deeper than any of that surface stuff; the transformation has to happen,” he said. “The book offers a way for a family to come together.”

Diggs’ family is no exception. He said he is already planning another book to address his own child’s experience as being both white and black. (Diggs’ wife is theater actress Idina Menzel.)

Admitting to an audience member that there have been some negative reactions to the book, including personal attacks and people taking exception to the use of the term “chocolate, Diggs said that he has spent much of his life trying to justify one thing or another and he’s now beyond it.

“The thing you can always count on is [some people] trying to bring you down,” he said. “Now, these darts come at you and you can bat them away.”

“General, do you think you would have made it if your parents hadn’t cared if you were dead or alive?” the boy asked Powell.

To this day, it is a question he hasn’t stopped thinking about, he told a packed audience at an Askwith Forum last week.  Powell responded to the question by encouraging the boy to use the resources around him, and told him that there were people that could help him. “There are people to hold your hand,” he recalled telling the boy.

“[Because of] that experience I knew I had to get more involved,” Powell said. “If we have kids [feeling] like this, it is something worth getting involved in.”

While some may find it unusual for Powell to speak on education, he said he felt certified on the topic, arguing that he ran the largest school system in America and the world – the U.S. Armed Forces.  He has also raised three children, which, he said, “was harder than [leading] thousands of soldiers.”

At the base of Powell’s education work is his involvement in America’s Promise Alliance, an organization for which he was the founding chairperson and is currently chaired by his wife Alma Powell. America’s Promise, founded in 1997, is a cross-sector partnership of 400-plus national organizations representing nonprofit groups, businesses, communities, educators, and policymakers dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth.

Powell explained that the idea for America’s Promise grew out of a presidential summit on America’s future with the idea that there are five things kids need to have in life: responsible, caring adults in their lives; safe places to learn and grow; healthy starts in life; a marketable skill; and an opportunity to serve their community.

In 2010, America’s Promise Alliance launched Grad Nation, a growing movement of dedicated individuals, organizations, and communities working together to end the dropout crisis. Schools are becoming “drop out factories,” Powell said. This causes problems throughout American society on every level, including in the armed forces to which many American kids can not apply because they lack high school diplomas. The goal of Grad Nation is to raise the national high school graduation rate to 90 percent by 2020.

“Education begins the moment you are in your mom’s arms,” Powell said. Without a loving adult to help teach a child about colors, numbers, tying shoelaces, and time, children enter school without a readiness to learn, he said. “The challenge you all have as professional educators is to convince everyone in the world that it isn’t just schools [that educate], but that learning starts in early moments in life.”

When asked what it takes to inspire a child, Powell said that it’s important for adults to not just talk at children but to watch them and set good examples in life. “If a child sees love, warmth, and kindness in the family, they will identify that as good,” he said. “I guarantee that child will take that path.”

This event was held on Monday, April 30. Watch this space for a video of the forum in the upcoming weeks.

“I find the question to be simultaneously heartening and disheartening,” said Deborah Delisle, nominee for assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education, U.S. Department of Education and former Ohio State Superintendent. “Disheartening in that it is a rare conversation at the local, state, or federal level…. We don’t craft our schools around [that question].”

Delisle was one of five panelists – also including Tufts University President-Emeritus and HGSE President in Residence Lawrence S. Bacow, Harvard Kennedy School Professor and Director of the Center for Public Leadership David Gergen, Harvard University Professor Emeritus Henry Rosovsky, and Vermont Department of Education Commissioner Armando Vilaseca – who discussed the goals and means to educating students in our times at the forum, “Defining the Educated Person.” The forum was cosponsored by the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard (ALI) – which is designed to enhance and leverage the skills of highly accomplished, experienced leaders dedicated to solving significant social problems.

To be considered educated, said the panelists, students should leave school with a deep understanding of themselves and how they fit into the world, and have learned what some call “soft skills” – complex problem-solving, creativity, entrepreneurship, the ability to manage themselves, and the ability to be lifelong learners. As Professor Fernando Reimers, who moderated the panel, summarized, there is a disconnect between how education gets delivered in the classroom and the common desire for students to become good, well-rounded people.

Delisle pointed out that educators often lose sight of creating well-rounded students because they are busy fighting over accountability and who is at fault in the classroom. Then, educators tend to focus more on “silver bullets” and “best practices” as a means to solving educations problems, she said.

Over the years, Bacow noted that part of the problem could be how education’s goal had somehow become more instrumental. Gone are the days where going to college was more about expanding your mind versus landing you a job.

While there are many things in education that could be changed, Rosovsky said he likes to ask people what doesn’t need to change. While Rosovsky said many people cannot answer that question, he once received a memorable response: meaningful human contact.

Rosovsky also wondered whether the creation of technology added to the disconnect between what makes an educated person and how that education is being delivered. Panelists had mixed views on this. Vilaseca, for one, views technology as a tool that won’t replace people. “I don’t think relationships are going away…relationships are the most important thing,” he said.

However, some argued that technology hinders our contemplative nature. According to Bacow, technology has significantly decreased the amount of time people actually think about things. “We need to find more time for reflection and contemplation,” he said.

Despite the immediate gratification of technology, Gergen added that students really do understand the need for solitude and reflection.

“What do we want an educated person to be?” Bacow said. “We want them to be wise, creative, empathetic, engaged. There are many processes by which we can to bring students to that state of being and there is a role for family, a role for teachers, and a role for contemplation and reflection to get there.”

At a heated Askwith Forum, “New Orleans Education Reform: Pass or Fail?” participants went head-to-head debating issues like academic achievement, special education, teacher firings and unions, and governance.  Time columnist and EduWonk blogger Andy Rotherham moderated the discussion between Sarah Newell Usdin, founder and CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, and Kristen Buras, assistant professor of urban educational policy at Georgia State University.

One of the only things upon which the participants could agree was that, prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans schools were abysmal with a history of mass disinvestment. The city had some of the worst schools in the nation, rapid superintendent turnover, and a human resources and financial crisis leaving over $3 million in salary and benefits being paid to deceased employees.

Although some education reforms like the development of the state-run Recovery School District (RSD) began before Hurricane Katrina, the storm fueled the development of new mandates and forced a redefininition of the school system in an effort to reopen schools as quickly as possible.  A point of contention for many in education, including Buras, Usdin, and the New Orleans community, remains the manner in which this occurred. To date, there are class action lawsuits pending in areas of teacher firings and unions, and an onslaught of new charter school openings that have left many wondering whether New Orleans schools have truly seen improvement.

According to Usdin, the schools have seen the “most dramatic gains in a school system in a short amount of time,” with 56 percent of students performing on grade level compared with 35 percent before Katrina. Yet Buras contended that those numbers are not an accurate portrayal of what was really happening in schools, particularly in the RSD. “RSD schools are a complete failure,” Buras said. “A vast majority of the schools are still failing.” She noted that the standards that were passed in 2004–2005 changed the definition of failing public schools and continue to bealtered in order to make it appear as though the schools are performing better than they actually are.

“The success of the New Orleans charter school movement has been legislatively defined,” Buras said. “If you treat standards of what constitutes status of failure like a ping pong ball and continuously move it, then you can generate success or failure by shifting the definition.”

The standard in 2005 was a score 87.4. In 2009, the state lowered it to 75 and, in 2010, lowered it even further to 60, she said. In 2012, the number stands at 75. “You can’t use one standard to take over and then ratchet up the standard,” Buras added. “The absolute numbers are dismal.”

Rotherham, visibly baffled by the difference in numbers and percentages, quipped, “I’m still completely confused.”

Usdin clarified that the standards are increasing, but that still means that 56 percent of students are on level and that percentage is rising. “We’ve cut the gap between the state and the city,” she said, noting the RSD was on track to outperform the state in the next few years.

In the area of special education, Buras accused the RSD of not evenly distributing the numbers of special education students among schools and a negligence among New Orleans schools to properly educate these students.

Usdin didn’t deny a need for improvement in special education efforts on all fronts. “It’s a persistent, prevalent problem,” she said, admitting there was still a long way to go but also pointing out that most urban schools in the country are not doing a “good job” with special education.

In addition to those issues of contention, Buras raised conspiracy theories in which she accused other hands at work – mainly the government – of eyeing New Orleans as the “charter school experiment of the nation.”

Buras said that several mandates alluded to New Orleans schools being “subject to charterization” and, if they didn’t, then disaster aid would be withheld.

Usdin flatly denied Buras’ theories. She said that many schools had made efforts to secede from the school district and gain charters prior to the hurricane, and there was nothing being urged by the federal government. “There was never any mention of the Heritage Foundation or anything coming from the White House,” she said.

Following the hurricane, a declaration made by the New Orleans governor stating that it could take upward of a year for schools to reopen prompted the creation of charters by many educators, Usdin said, in an effort just to get schools open again.

In closing, Rotherham asked Buras and Usdin if there had been any improvements at all to New Orleans schools.  “Not much,” Buras quickly responded. But Usdin insisted that improvements had been made and will continue into the future.

Kennedy came to the forum to talk about Speak Truth to Power, a global initiative that uses the experiences of courageous defenders from around the world to educate people about human rights, and urge them to take action.

“It’s an empowering message for them to have because [often people] say you can’t do something about it. But yes, we can,” she said. “It is so important for the next generation to know that and understand it and believe it. And, it’s up to all of us as teachers to convey that.”

It was Kennedy’s own experiences as a child and adolescent that shaped her future as an activist and defender.  While Kennedy admitted she had a mostly idyllic childhood, she highlighted how the assassinations of her father, Robert Kennedy; her uncle, John F. Kennedy; and Martin Luther King, followed by traumatic experiences faced by some of her friends who have been raped, grown up in abusive homes, and died of AIDS, made her question why these things happen.

During a college internship at Amnesty International, Kennedy’s discovery of the International Declaration of Human Rights motivated her to take action.

“Everything that was a source of confusion and chaos for me [as a child] had something in common – everything was a violation of international human rights. And, there were laws against it,” she said. “And, there is a whole slew of people around the world – lawyers and activists — who are working to protect those rights. That was so transformative for me and such an extraordinary revelation.”

The goal behind Speak Truth to Power is to provide a learning platform for students who may find themselves in chaotic situations or oppressive communities whether in school, home, or society. Speak Truth to Power hopes to convey that there is a way out, she said.

The way out is by becoming a “defender.” Most of us, Kennedy said, are not born “civil rights defenders” but instead fall into one of four different roles: perpetrator, victim, bystander, or defender. She cautioned that often the position you learn to play as a youth will continue into adulthood. Therefore, students must be trained to become defenders. Speak Truth to Power’s innovative curriculum and programs stretch from kindergarten all the way to law school in an effort to do so.

“We want to train people to identify emotions and use it to create a world that is fair,” she said.

Kennedy acknowledged that there are roadblocks to schools adopting the Speak Truth to Power curriculum, citing as example how social studies loses its place in an era of standardized testing.

“Students are human beings and need to be treated and see themselves as something more than just test takers, especially if they come from oppressive communities,” Kennedy said. “You want them to come to school. You want them to feel involved. You want them to feel like they have a stake. That’s what I think the value of Speak Truth to Power is.”

In this edition of the Harvard EdCast, Jackson reflects on how we can close the opportunity gap in public schools across the country.

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About the Harvard EdCast

The Harvard EdCast is a weekly series of podcasts, available on the Harvard University iTunes U page, that features a 15-20 minute conversation with thought leaders in the field of education from across the country and around the world. Hosted by Matt Weber, the Harvard EdCast is a space for educational discourse and openness, focusing on the myriad issues and current events related to the field.