by Dan Perkins

from NAACP Release

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has called for an assessment of federal education initiatives that seek to ensure all children of access to higher education.  The civil rights organization seeks the assessment as it prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board decision which ordered school districts to desegregate 'with all deliberate speed," and the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA). 

The assessment will be part of the 6th Biennial Daisy Bates Education Summit, which will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, May 12-14. The NAACP Education Summit bears the name of the late Daisy Bates, former president of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP and advisor in 1957 to the Little Rock Nine, the students who braved hostile opponents of integration to Central High School. The theme of this year's Summit is With All Deliberate Speed: Assessing the National Progress In Educating All Children.

Dr. John Jackson, NAACP National Education Director, said: "The Summit works to shape and strengthen an education advocacy agenda that is measurable, effective and capable of reducing the existing racial disparities in our education system."

The NAACP goal is to use the Summit as a platform to conduct education assessments while convening with state partners to strengthen efforts to close the achievement gaps and assist in meeting the benchmarks in the No Child Left Behind Act.

Attending the Summit will be teachers, administrators, researchers, civic organizations, faith-based communities and elected officials who want to promote an equal opportunity educational agenda and discuss initiatives such as the NAACP Call for Action.

Over the past three years, the NAACP Call for Action initiative has gained tremendous momentum. Forty-eight states agreed to address their state's racial disparities in education and to submit an Educational Equity Partnership Plan by June 24. The plan asks states to outline their individual efforts to reduce education-related racial disparities by 50 percent over the next five years. NAACP state and local education chairs have annually participated in training sessions designed to help states to address these disparities. 

This years Summit will feature a special Town Hall Meeting entitled The State of the African American Male: Will Young Black Males Be Left Behind?, which will be moderated by Jeff Johnson from BET's "The Cousin Jeff Chronicles."

Town Hall panelists include Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL); Dr. Rosa A. Smith, President, Caroline and Sigmund Schott Foundation; Dr. James Lanier, Resident Scholar, Institute for Opportunity and Equality, National Urban League; and Judith A. Browne, Co-director, The Advancement Project.

Summit workshops consist of: Addressing Disparities in Higher Education; Managing Through the Deficits: Strategies for Addressing School Budget Cuts; Keeping the Dream Alive: Counteracting the Dropout Trend and Addressing the Disproportionate Representation of Minorities in Special Education.

Reg Weaver, President, National Education Association (NEA) will deliver remarks as will Dee Merrill, Senior Vice President Wachovia Corporation; Dr. James Pughsley, Superintendent, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools; Marvin Pittman, Director of Middle Grades Education, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction; NAACP Interim President and CEO Dennis Courtland Hayes; NAACP Education Director John Jackson; and NAACP Board members Maxine Smith, National Education Committee Chair; and Adora Obi Nweze, Daisy Bates Education Summit Chair.

Additional information about the Summit and online registeration is available at the NAACP web site, located at www.naacp.org.