This fall, the Urban League of Greater Miami will launch a major initiative targeting parents in Miami-Dade. The campaign, called the “Development Revolution,” is aimed at promoting a renewed emphasis on education and achievement among minority families with children in public school. With the start of the 2009/2010 school year already under way, the organization says changing the condition of minority children will take a radically different approach.
“If our children are to succeed, and our community to change, it’s going to take a revolution,” Urban League of Greater Miami, Inc. president T. Willard Fair said. Citing the recent results of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, he added: “there’s something wrong when in America in 2009, only two out of ten Black 9th and 10th graders in Miami-Dade Public Schools is reading on grade level.”
And while Fair, who is completing his term as chairman of the state’s Board of Education, said the usual response of local government is to try and “fix” the schools where children are struggling, “We need to stop trying to ‘fix the schools, and start focusing on the neighborhoods and families that feed into those schools.”
The purpose of the “Development Revolution” campaign will be to shape the thinking of Miami-area parents, so that they can contribute to their children’s success. The program is focused on Black and Hispanic children, whom Fair says are not achieving at the level of their peers. But first, Fair says parents, particularly those with children in failing schools, need to get outraged.
“If the children in Cooper City were failing at the rate of the children in Liberty City, the parents would storm the school,” he said. “We need parents to get mad, and then we will give them the tools for change.”
The campaign will enlist neighborhood institutions, including churches, fraternities and sororities, and other community-based organizations, to provide support and education for parents, so they can in turn provide critical support to their children.
“If parents communicate in their homes that education is important, the children will learn and achieve,” Fair said.
The goal of the program will be to utilize a number of means — from direct contact to the media, to encourage parents and stakeholders to form a “community of concern” around our children. The pillars of the “revolution” are that parents need to become:
VIGILANT
INFORMED
VOCAL
INVOLVED
VISIBLE
&
ORGANIZED
… in order to improve their childrens’ chances of academic and life success. The program will be rolled out in the coming months.
