From: High School Students
Just in time for the 2004 election season, Letters to the Next President: What We Can Do About the Real Crisis in Public Education (Teachers College Press, February 2004) speaks to the heart of public education and the future of American students. WKCD student authors Rosa Fernandez and Vance Rawles provide the opening two letters—followed by more than 30 others from top education experts, elected officials, business and community leaders, teachers, principals, parents, and other students. Together, they ask tough questions about the kind of education we want for all children and how to make diverse voices heard. And they offer straightforward suggestions for improvement.
For more information about LETTERS TO THE NEXT PRESIDENT:
What We Can Do About the Real Crisis in Public Education, go
to www.tcpress.com or www.amazon.com
To: The Next President
The last time I saw Doña Eva, a morning in October 1999, she was standing on the porch as we waved goodbye in the warm Dominican breeze...The next day, I found myself in the streets of the Bronx, in the city of New York—the place we had heard about for so long, where our dreams would come true. My sister and I moved into one room with my mother and her husband, in a house shared with many other people... Neither of us spoke any English, and neither did our mother. Still, Mami found her way to the city’s office for education, where an official who spoke Spanish assigned me and Carmen each to a different school. Click here to read Rosa’s full letter.
I am nineteen years old and I have lived in Harlem all my life. This past year, I got my G.E.D., and I’m about to start college at Cooper Union in New York City. I work several jobs to raise the money I’ll need to live on. I can talk like an educated person, and I can talk like the kids on the street. You would probably point to me as a success story. But you wouldn’t have much idea of what got me here. Maybe you should. Click here to read Vance’s full letter
