Last month, President Barack Obama announced his intentions to name 15 people to the President’s Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans, according to a press release:
- Angela Glover Blackwell
- Barbara T. Bowman
- Gwendolyn E. Boyd
- Walter G. Bumphus
- James P. Comer
- Al Dotson, Jr.
- Akosua Barthwell Evans
- Jim Freeman
- Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks
- Michael L. Lomax
- Bryant T. Marks
- Robert K. Ross
- Doris A. Smith-Ribner
- Ronald A. Williams
- TyKiah R. Wright
We hope the president has chosen this commission wisely, and education historian Diane Ravitch has thrown her support behind one commissioner in particular.
Dr James P Comer is the Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center, a position he has held since 1975. He first joined the Yale faculty and founded the Comer School Development Program in 1968, a program designed to improve scholastic performance of children from lower-income and minority backgrounds in particular.
Diane Ravitch writes that Dr Comer “has devoted his career to helping children by focusing on their social and emotional development and their relationship to their family and community. He is not an admirer of the punitive stress of high-stakes testing, which harms children’s development. Dr Comer understands that Race to the Top ignores what matters most in healthy child development.”
In 2006, Dr Comer served as Chair of the Roundtable on Child and Adolescent Development Research and Teacher Education. He served as a member of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s Commission on the Whole Child in 2006. He has received many awards for his work, including the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Education, the Harold W McGraw Jr Prize in Education, and 48 honorary degrees.
He also served in the military, completing his service in 1968 with the rank of Surgeon (Lt Colonel) in the US Public Health Service. Dr Comer received a BA from Indiana University, an MD from Howard University, and an MPH from the University of Michigan.
For a thorough look at Dr Comer’s many achievements and what he brings to the president’s commission, see this article in the New Haven Independent.
This commission is “charged with strengthening the nation by improving educational outcomes for African Americans to ensure that all African Americans receive an education that prepares them for college, productive careers, and satisfying lives. This mission is part of the Administration’s broader mandate to restore the country to its role as the global leader in education.”
Keep in mind, being a leader doesn’t always mean being #1. The old way, as in the 19th-century way, of thinking about leadership was by a person’s title or ranking and how quickly they got there. But in the 21st century, traditional leadership isn’t what counts. What matters more in today’s global economy is so-called emergent leadership. This is the stuff that most often comes with people who are the best at what they do. Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times about an interview with Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google:
Traditional leadership is, were you president of the chess club? Were you vice president of sales? How quickly did you get there? We don’t care. What we care about is, when faced with a problem and you’re a member of a team, do you, at the appropriate time, step in and lead. And just as critically, do you step back and stop leading, do you let someone else? Because what’s critical to be an effective leader in this environment is you have to be willing to relinquish power.
Here’s hoping we find a way that doesn’t involve getting the highest test scores to “lead” the world in education. This panel seems to be a good start. I hope President Obama heeds their sage advice and can give action to some of their ideas.
