Mayor Nutter will give his first Education Policy Address tomorrow (Thursday Sept. 11, 6:00 p.m., South Philly High). He has outlined two lofty goals: to cut in half Philadelphia’s 45% drop-out rate within 5-7 years and to double the amount of Philadelphians with four year degrees over the next 5-10 years.

These are great goals that families, parents, students, and community members who are advocating and organizing to improve public education can get behind. It is encouraging to see that the mayor is taking on these issues proactively, setting goals, and working with District officials and other elected officials to assert the role of the city in improving public education.

And with such lofty goals as these, it is clear that the mayor will need the support and therefore the buy-in not only of district leadership and elected officials, but of those most directly effected by the crisis in our public education system, the very same people I mentioned above. There are 167,000 public school students in our city, 55,000 of whom are high school students.

If we can trust that Mayor’s goals are not just about what looks good on his watch but what is truly in the best interests of students, parents, and families, then he and other district officials must recognize that these thousands of students and the families they represent must not merely be acted upon through policies and programs, but must themselves become the change agents who are driving the process. In recognizing this I would like to speak on some of the dynamics that arise when young people organize and advocate on their own behalf around public school issues. The points below reflect conversations I have had with youth leaders speaking candidly about the enormous obstacles that they face making their voices heard to elected officials and other leaders, transforming themselves from victims to change agents, reclaiming their education, and taking a stand for self-determination.

They raised three main points:

Recognize and respect the role of student activism in school reform. Every movement and struggle from the civil rights movement to the school reform movement must be lead by those most effected. The attitude that students should keep their heads down, just try to get by, and not take an active role in advocating for themselves sends the wrong message to young people. If there weren’t some missing pieces in this equation, then the adults working so hard every day to solve these problems would have seen successful by now. Students provide a valuable and necessary voice because they bring fresh perspectives and they are, after all, the very reasons why this system exists. Students have to play their part in order for schools to work; when denied a voice they will not take responsibility for the system that is failing them.

Understand the correlation between student organizing and student achievement. Anyone who wants to see more Philadelphia public school students graduate will look to strategies and methods that have been successful in keeping young people engaged and active in their education. In order for young people to lead, they have to read, write, develop communication skills, follow through on what they say they are going to do, develop time management skills, learn constructive approaches to solving problems, resolve conflicts peacefully, master self-discipline, and commit to collective responsibility. These elements provide the motivation for students to go to class, stay in school and graduate. Young organizers understand that demanding more from teachers, administrators and officials means demanding more of themselves. They understand that adults won’t take them seriously if they are not deemed worthy. When young people feel powerful and in charge, and that they can make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others, they suddenly have an enormous incentive to show up and stay in. When young organizers feel like adults in positions of power are taking them seriously as real change agents who deserve respect, the incentive becomes even greater. Adults in positions of power can give student leaders additional courage by listening to them, taking them seriously, and working with them, not just dismissing them by falling into the oppressive pattern of thinking that young people should be acted on, not be actors in their own right (read: children are to be seen and not heard) and understanding that young people have the judgment and wisdom to understand the difference between real solutions and band-aid approaches.

Take young people who are organizing in their schools seriously (for two reasons).

Reason 1: Young people are prepared. In order to be able to effectively advocate for themselves young people spend hours doing research and seeking assistance in understanding policy matters, history, and difficult concepts and ideas. Through a process of mutual assistance, more experienced youth train younger youth in understanding what they will need to know, how to message themselves, what it means to build allies, the strategy of social action. Because young people work so hard, commit so much of themselves and their time, and overcome so much oppression and adultism in our culture while organizing for their basic rights, it is discouraging and disrespectful when young people are called ‘puppets’ for speaking out on dense or complicated issues. The assumption here is that if young people understand and can speak and act knowledgably on policy issues, they can’t be credible and they must be the puppets of some ‘hidden agenda’. Young people very much resent the implication that they don’t know the difference between appearance and reality. Anyone who has worked with young people in the Philadelphia public schools knows that they call bull*** and can sense insincerity from a mile away. Both the sheer level of student commitment as well as a basic understanding of how frank and forthcoming today’s young people are should combine to put adults on alert that youth organizers deserve to be taken seriously.

Elected officials and people in positions of power know full well the importance of preparation, reading policy briefs, doing background research, thinking about messaging, coalition building, allies, targets, and advanced planning to accomplish goals. In fact, many of these folks have the ability to pay large staffs who spend all of their time thinking about all of these issues and then ‘coach’ them accordingly. Young people, who obviously don’t have access to those kinds of resources, have to learn from the lessons of history and social movements of the past the techniques of popular and political education that prepare them to take on the challenges of fighting for their education in a system in which there are thousands of adults being paid to solve these seemingly intractable problems. Surely a good deal of preparedness is necessary for this task. Adults in positions of power should respect the efforts of young people to educate themselves and speak eloquently about complicated concepts and ideas without accusing them of being puppets.

Reason 2: Because they are so prepared and have such a clear understanding of the issues- every issue they’ve framed in coalition with parents and community members is based in real, expected, achievable reforms that in an equitable system would already be in place – (an equitable distribution of qualified and experienced teachers across the district; good building conditions, additional books and materials, interactive and engaging classes, rigorous college or job preparation curricula that prepare students to be critical thinkers and understand the world around them, adequate school funding, proven and cost-effective reforms for struggling schools, transparency around budgets and contracts, openness and community engagement, adequate libraries, student success centers, student-centered personalized community driven small neighborhood high schools). All of these proven reforms should already be in place so that all of our young people have a fighting chance in life.

Many great young leaders emerge from youth serving organizations with multi-million dollar budgets who service large number of youth with much-needed job training, art, and other programs.

And some of the most articulate voices in today’s school reform struggles are young organizers who have a deepened kind of consciousness that is rooted in the struggles of our ancestors who fought for justice and on whose shoulders all of us stand today. These young leaders emerge from small, independent organizations with shoe-string budgets, founded and led by youth with adult support, with meager resources but lots of guts and heart to speak truth to power and advocate for real solutions despite the myriad agendas of others.

It is my sincere hope that elected officials and adults who are in positions of power take young organizers who are prepared, dedicated and opinionated seriously if they are truly serious about getting to the root causes of the problems that are causing 1 in 2 Philadelphia public school students to opt out of the system. So far, the forecast looks bright for increased collaboration and communication.

Nijmie Zakkiyyah Dzurinko is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union(PSU) and is proud to say that the high school drop-out rate among the members of PSU from 1995-present is 0.06% (www.phillystudentunion.org)