While there are mounting challenges facing urban school districts across the nation, there are also some productive outcomes and solutions. Some of those best practices were on full display at the 5th Biennial International Conference on Urban Education held in Cancun, Mexico.
Sponsored by The Urban Education Collaboration, led by Dr. Chance W. Lewis at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, this year’s theme “Urban Excellence: Building Communities and Unlocking Opportunities,” drew more than 700 participants for three days of sharing and strategizing.
The convening took on a greater sense of urgency, following Tuesday’s election of Donald J. Trump, with speakers saying that urban educators must ready themselves for the assaults to education that will likely come under a second Trump presidency.
Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick
Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick, dean emeriti and professor of education at Howard University delivered a rousing keynote, detailing the fierce resistance and opposition to the historic 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
“Blacks did not leave the education professions after Brown, the professions were taken from us purposely,” said Fenwick, who chronicled the history in her award-winning book Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership. Fenwick noted that before Brown and white resistance to it, in 17 states, 35 to 50 percent of the teachers were Black.
“Today, no state approaches these percentages," she said. "In fact, less than 7 percent of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers, 11 percent of our 90,000 principals and less than 3 percent of the nation’s 13, 800 superintendents are Black, even though Black educators are the nation’s most academically credentialed.”
