By Khadijah Abdullah, Teach for America-Alabama Executive Director
This year, we celebrate the fifth anniversary of Teach For America-Alabama. Over the past five years, our state has made so many significant strides to ensure our students move closer to achieving the equitable education they deserve.
I come to you as a former Birmingham City Schools student, Alabama native, Teach For America (TFA) alum and now state director. I am excited, proud, thankful and humbled to have been a partner to each of our districts, parents and communities over the past five years.
Too often, where children are born still determines the quality of their education and life prospects. Children who are born in low-income communities are more likely than their affluent peers to be deprived of adequate health care, nutrition, housing and access to a high-quality education. The consequences of these circumstances manifest themselves as early as kindergarten, where students from low-income communities enter the classroom having heard, on average, 30 million fewer words than their peers in more affluent communities. As children get older, the gap only widens.
Currently, one in 10 students from low-income communities across our country – the communities TFA serves – graduate from college. Many students from these communities are disproportionately children of color – students that look like me. Given that nearly 50 percent of Alabama’s children live below the poverty line, reaching as high as 90 percent in some of our Black Belt districts, Alabama’s current education system is still failing to reach some of our neediest students.
Despite these challenges, our students are fighters. Every single day in the classroom, our students – Alabama’s children – are fighting to overcome these challenges. I am proud of the progress my home state is making, and I am optimistic that by continuing to partner, challenge and inspire one another, our community will achieve a day when all students will begin to realize their dreams.
In five years, our state has made significant strides:
- Alabama has been recognized for having one of the top Pre-K programs in the country and has voted to expand its reach to more three- and four-year-olds across our state.
- State Superintendent Tommy Bice rolled out his 2020 Plan to increase our high school graduation rates and in just a few years we have seen our graduation rates increase 11 points to 86 percent!
- With the adoption of rigorous standards for our students that allow us to more easily benchmark students’ readiness for college and career success, our state is investing in its students and has made significant strides.
Teach For America-Alabama is a partner in this work. Our vision at Teach For America is simple: One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.
In 2019, Alabama will reach its second centennial as a state and given our significant progress, and the significant obstacles our students still face, we must find a way for all of our students to achieve.
We are at a moment where if we unite around an ambitious vision for Alabama’s students and partner together to make that vision a reality, we can have a fundamentally different state by 2019. To do so, we must leverage our strengths and our history, work together, and continue to build on this foundation for our students.
This post was adapted from Khadijah Abdullah’s speech during Teach for America-Alabama’s fifth anniversary celebration and is Part I of a two-part series. Click here to read Part II.