![]() Payne is heartened by some of the signs of progress he’s read about, like the fact that over the past 10 years the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is one of the two or three fastest improving districts in the country, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.īut he says most people are profoundly unaware of the progress being made in urban schools. There’s still a big gap, but American urban schools have been making progress.” And, overall, over the last decade, urban students have closed the test score gap with the nation by about a third. The degree to which we use data is absolutely better. “The quality of leadership in urban systems is probably better. “If you go back to the early 2000s and compare that to now, a lot of things have absolutely gotten better,” he says. In the decades between those publications, he's seen hopeful signs of improvement in urban school districts, despite the grim headlines. ![]() The book won awards from the Southern Regional Council, Choice Magazine, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry of Human Rights in North America. He is also the author of I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995). ![]() His seminal books, including Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure in Urban Education (1984) and So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (2008), have attempted to chronicle and unpack what researchers and practitioners have learned from three decades of efforts to rehabilitate inner city schools. "Long before researcher-practice partnership became a buzzword, Professor Payne was modeling how to bring community members into the research equation in an authentic way," says his former student Eric Brown, AM '08, who says he would like his own work to mirror that of his mentor's. Brown is a doctoral student in the Program in Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University.ĭuring his career, Payne has adroitly blended influential scholarship, community activism, and public service, with a stellar teaching career that has earned him accolades and a devoted following of former students. “I never thought of African American studies as a career in fact, at that point, it wasn’t really possible to think of it as a career,” he says. He headed to Northwestern’s doctoral program in sociology "because sociology is where you went if you wanted to work on urban issues."Īfter completing his PhD, his rise up the academic ranks took him from Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, to Williams College, back to Northwestern, then to Duke and ultimately to the University of Chicago and SSA, where he also is an affiliate of the Urban Education Institute and an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. Along his academic career path he built a formidable reputation as a scholar who also rolled up his sleeves and dove into community activism. He had no clear idea of what he wanted to do post college. The 1970s were a nascent time in the development of African American studies at most white institutions. So I began to see education as a useful framework to look at and think about the issues facing black America.”Īnd so, in 1970, after earning a bachelor’s degree in Afro-American studies from Syracuse (he was one of the first people in the country to earn a degree in that discipline), Payne embarked on a 40-year career focused, in large measure, on the role of education as a catalyst for change in black communities. "I always wanted to work on urban issues. "I was interested in community organizing," he says. He was exposed in that classroom to the power that education has to change the lives and trajectories of urban children and the communities in which they lived. So to go to work with children from the Syracuse housing projects.that was a whole new culture for me," he says. "I had grown up in a rural area where black children did not speak back to adults. Still, for Payne, who was dispatched to help in a sixth grade classroom, the experience was transformative, although the children could be unruly and impertinent in ways that astonished him. It was, recalls Payne, a well-intentioned, if hapless, effort. "The folks at Syracuse were way out of their element," he says. "They had no conception of how to do that kind of work."
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |