TC Salutes Its Students in the City
In April, TC held its first Student Research and Outreach Recognition Day, sponsored by the College's Office of School and Community Partnerships, in collaboration with The Campaign for Educational Equity.
In April, TC held its first Student Research and Outreach Recognition Day, sponsored by the College’s Office of School and Community Partnerships, in collaboration with The Campaign for Educational Equity.
The highlight of the proceedings was a reception in Everett Lounge for the more than 150 TC students who took part this past year in urban school and community service through venues such as the Student Press Initiative, the Reading and Math Buddies, the Teacher Opportunity Corps, Heritage High School, LiFE, the Peace Corps Fellows, Say Yes to Education, and The Comic Book Project. These organizations and other TC projects in New York City public schools mounted brightly colored posters, exhibitions of work and table displays in Everett.
Keynote speaker Marcia Lyles, New York City’s Deputy Chancellor of Public Schools and a TC alumna, thanked the students for caring about making a difference for inner-city kids, citing her own experiences growing up in poor communities in the city. She briefly recapped the story she has told at other TC events, of how her sixth grade teacher Carrie Simpson inspired her to go to college and become a teacher, and then added a post-script.
“Recently a bunch of us who were students in Carrie Simpson’s class got together for dinner, and each one of us thought we were her favorite,” she said. “And the fact that here we were, so many years later, still arguing about that, tells you how important this woman was for us. So that’s the kind of impact you can have.”
Nancy Streim, Associate Vice President and head TC’s Office of School and Community Partner-ships, also thanked the students for their efforts.
“We know how hard you work, and
that this came on top of everything else you do at TC,” she said. “We salute you and hope you got as much out of the experience as you gave, or more.”
Earlier in the day, The Campaign held its first-ever Student Research Conference on Educational Equity, at which TC students who had received Equity Research Grants in 2008 presented findings from their projects. For example, Dongshu Ou, a doctoral student in the Economics and Education Program, analyzed test results for 11th and 12th graders who had taken the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment between 2002 and 2006. Students have three opportunities to pass the state’s math and language arts high school exit exams. Yet Ou found that students who barely failed one of the tests have a higher probability of dropping out than students who barely passed the exam and that this effect was especially pronounced for poor and minority students.
“We think it is important to offer students the opportunity to address the equity issues that most concern students or interest them as students and scholars,” said Michael Rebell, Executive Director of The Campaign.
For a full list of papers presented at the conference, please visit www.tcequity.org.
Published Monday, Jul. 14, 2008
