On May 24, 2006, Michael A. Rebell, Executive Director of The Campaign for Educational Equity spoke to the incoming group of Teachers College Peace Corp Fellows at their orientation meeting.

The TC Peace Corps Fellows Program (www.tc.edu/pcfellows) trains returned Peace Corps volunteers to address educational equity by making long-term professional commitments to teach in New York City's Public schools.

Rebell told the group that the talk gave him "a nostalgic opportunity to reflect back on his own Peace Corps experience when he served in Sierra Leone, West Africa doing rural community development work."  Rebell impressed upon the new Fellows how his own "deep-routed Peace Corps experience gave me the motivation and persistence to continue to work on educational equity issues all these years."  "I challenged them to do the same," he said.

Executive Director Rebell spoke about the current state of educational equity in the United States -- 50 years after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education.  While he was candid about the dismal educational circumstances that many students today still face today, he spoke about the promise of the education adequacy movement that he has championed. The education adequacy movement is a rapidly growing, highly successful legal strategy to school finance reform aimed at redressing the inequitable distribution of educational resources and opportunities that has continued even after the Brown v. Board of Education decision.  This successful legal strategy allows courts to focus on the concrete issues of what resources are needed to provide the opportunity for an adequate education for all students in light of new challenging state standards all students are expected to achieve. Using this legal theory, since 1989, lawyers have argued that all students are entitled, under their state constitutions, to an adequate or basic, quality education, that prepares them to meet challenging new state learning standards.  As a result, plaintiffs have prevailed in 21 of 28 (75%) cases during this period.  

Rebell congratulated TC Peace Corps Fellows for their participation in this program and encouraged them in their chosen field of teaching: "quality teaching will make a difference in the lives of the students in your classrooms and, in turn, on the larger society." 

Published Wednesday, Jun. 7, 2006