Frank

I will officially graduate from the University of Kansas in 97 days, but for the last 97 days, I have been consumed with trying to plan my future once outside academia that has sheltered me for three-and-a-half long years. One thing is for sure, I will move to Washington, DC. Beyond that, I have a few different plans slowly firming up.

I recently found an online news article that my roommate who was reading over my shoulder. The article cited a report by the District of Columbia State Education Agency that found about one-third of the people living in my future home are functionally illiterate. Director of the State Education Agency, Connie Spinner, tried to pin the blame of this number, which is higher than the national average of 21 percent, on the growing number of Hispanic and Ethiopian immigrants who currently number 170,000 people.

I, however, refuse to hold this minority responsible for the statistic. Instead, its time America is held accountable for the education it provides 76.6 million children annually. It's not just immigrants that are struggling with literacy, it's children in urban schools across the nation that simply don't get the attention they deserve in order to succeed academically.

In a study conducted by the Department of Education, researchers found students who lived in poverty (i.e., were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch) did significantly worse on reading tests than other students surveyed. These students had a third grade reading score 6.1 points below the average and would only make gains at an average pace, never closing the educational gap.

The news article interested me because part of my future plans will hopefully include becoming a part of the Teach For America program– a national corps of college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity. It began in 1990 when 500 men and women began teaching in six low-income communities across the country. They have had a presence in Washington, DC, since 1992, and today more than 5,000 corps members are teaching in 26 urban and rural areas profoundly affected by the achievement gap. The program, which started as an undergraduate thesis of the founder, has become the nation's largest provider of teachers for low-income communities, and has been recognized for building a pipeline of leaders committed to educational equity and excellence.

My thorough research of the program has revealed some shocking statistics to me about the widening gap in education, but I doubt few Americans have the same understanding of the scanty education inner city students receive.

If you find yourself unaware, this scenario from Teach for America might open your eyes:

In America today, educational inequity persists along socioeconomic and racial lines.

These disparities severely limit the life prospects of the 13 million children growing up in poverty today. And, because African-American and Latino/Hispanic children are three times as likely to grow up in a low-income area, these disparities also prevent many children of color from truly having equal opportunities in life.

The corps members working in Washington, DC, know blaming the poor literacy rate on one subgroup of people in the metro area is unreasonable. Immigrants surely account for a small portion of functional illiterates in the city, but a larger portion of the problem is found in the local education system that leaves thousands of students each year without a hope for a basic education even a caring teacher. By operating the Teach For America program in DC, students are learning from the nation's most promising future leaders who go above and beyond traditional expectations to help their students succeed.

On a 2005 survey conducted by the research firm Kane, Parsons & Associates, principals who manage Teach For America teachers overwhelmingly report that they are well prepared and have a significant and positive impact on their schools and on student achievement. The same survey showed that nearly three out of four principals considered the teachers more effective than other beginning teachers with whom they've worked, and 63 percent regarded TFA teachers as more effective than the overall teaching faculty, with respect to their impact on student achievement.

Time will prove that the outstanding men and women in the Teach for America corps are making a difference in the literacy rate of DC residents, but for now it's evident that they are making strides in closing the educational gap that creates the literacy problem in the first place.

So maybe, like these pioneering teachers, if your paycheck isn't from the State Education Agency, you'll be able to see the real and frightening reasons why literacy levels are appallingly low in urban DC and I can only hope it shocks you into action.