Reps. Fattah, Honda Hail the Launch of ‘Equity and Excellence Commission’

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Congressmen Chaka Fattah (D-PA) and Michael Honda (D-CA), the leading Congressional advocates for school funding equity, hailed the Department of Education’s appointment today of Commissioners who will launch and serve on the Equity and Excellence Commission.

The commission, first proposed and advanced by the two Congressmen in 2009, has been tasked with studying, and recommending solutions to, inequitable school finance systems and their effect on student achievement.

The 28 commissioners appointed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan bring a diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and opinions and represent the full political and educational spectrum. They include the leaders of both major teachers’ unions, business leaders, school district officials, civil rights advocates and former Republican Illinois governor Jim Edgar.

The Equity Commission’s first meeting will be Tuesday, February 22 at the Department of Education in Washington. That will be followed by public meetings, town halls and hearings across the nation to allow commissioners to gather information that inform their recommendations. The commission will report to the Secretary of Education, who will share the report with Congress, in May of 2012.

“This commission comes at a critical time in our fiscal history as a nation. Now, more than ever, we are compelled to use scarce public resources efficiently and effectively,” said Fattah, an innovator and advocate for education reform who proposed the Commission concept at a meeting with the President on Feb. 26, 2009. “We know that there is no more prudent investment in the nation’s growth and prosperity than the education of our young people.”

Congressman Honda declared, “All our children should have an equal opportunity to achieve prosperity, not just those at the top. Closing our achievement gap, however, is not just about those at the bottom. It is about making sure that every working and middle class neighborhood has a world-class school. The Equity Commission represents an important opportunity to reframe the issue of education equity and raise its profile in the national debate.”

Fattah, from Philadelphia, praised the work of Equity Commissioner Eric Hanushek, a Hoover Institution Fellow, who calculated that simply increasing the educational attainment of the nation’s lowest performing students would add $72 trillion to GDP, as well as a 2009 McKinsey report that found that the achievement gap has the economic effect of a permanent recession.

“The proof is there: Educational achievement will key our economic recovery,” Fattah said. “This is more than a question of fairness and equity, this is about the nation’s economic future.”

Honda, a former teacher and local school board member who has represented Silicon Valley in California for the past decade, introduced legislation, joined by Fattah, to authorize the Equity Commission. Honda launched the effort to fund the Commission in 2009.

“We have known for years that equal opportunity is a fallacy in our public schools. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA, which shows the US lagging badly behind most of the developed world in reading, math and science, highlights how equity/inequity in education correlates directly with global competitiveness (or lack thereof),” Honda continued. “As poverty increases in our schools, our scores steadily decrease. This finding should make our goal simple: To make every school as good as the schools in our wealthiest communities.

“The Equity Commission represents an opportunity to address our broken system of education finance and develop a plan for comprehensive school finance reform that is focused on high achievement for all students. I hope parents, teachers, administrators, Congress, the Department of Education and the Obama Administration seize the opportunity to make this a true Sputnik moment for each of our children.”

The Equity Commission is charged with collecting data, analyzing issues and obtaining broad public input on strategies for the federal government to increase educational opportunity by improving school funding equity. It will also make recommendations for restructuring school finance systems to achieve equity in resources and further student performance, especially for students at the lower end of the achievement gap. Members of the Commission announced today:

    Commission co-chair, Christopher Edley
    Dean, U.C. Berkeley Law School
    Commission co-chair, Reed Hastings
    Co-founder, Netflix
    Cynthia Brown
    Vice President for Education Policy, Center for American Progress
    Mike Casserly
    Executive Director, Council of Great City Schools
    Mariano-Florentino Cuellar
    Professor, Stanford Law School
    Linda Darling-Hammond
    Professor of Education, Stanford University
    Sandra Dungee Glenn
    President and Chief Executive Officer, American Cities Foundation
    Jim Edgar
    Governor of Illinois 1991-1999
    Eric Hanushek
    Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
    Karen Hawley Miles
    Executive Director and Founder, Education Resource Strategies
    Kati Haycock
    President, Education Trust
    Ben Jealous
    President and Chief Executive Officer, NAACP
    John King
    Senior Deputy Commissioner for P-12 Education, New York
    Ralph Martire
    Executive Director, Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
    Matt Miller
    Author, "The 2 Percent Solution" (2003) and "The Tyranny of Dead
     Ideas" (2009)
    Marc Morial
    President, National Urban League
    Michael Rebell
    Executive Director, The Campaign for Educational Equity
    Ahniwake Rose
    Policy Analyst, National Congress of American Indians
    Jesse Ruiz
    Chairman, Illinois State Board of Education
    Jim Ryan
    Professor, University of Virginia's School of Law
    Thomas Saenz
    President and General Counsel, MALDEF
    David Sciarra
    Executive Director, Education Law Center
    Robert Teranishi
    Associate Professor, New York University
    Jacquelyn Thompson
    Retired Director, Office of Special Education and Early Intervention
     Services, Michigan Department of Education
    Jose Torres
    Superintendent, School District U-46 in Elgin, Illinois
    Dennis Van Roekel
    President, National Education Association
    Randi Weingarten
    President, American Federation of Teachers
    Doris Williams
    Executive Director, Rural School and Community Trust

SOURCE Office of Congressman Chaka Fattah