Paterson, NJ as it Relates to the State of Connecticut: Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor's Commencement Speech

My mother and sister after graduation.  

Over the weekend I had the great pleasure to watch proudly as my little sister graduated with her Bachelors Degree in Math Education from the University of Connecticut.  She will still be attending UCONN for one more year as she completes her five-year program that will award her with a Masters in her field to go along with the Bachelors Degree. 

To brag slightly about my little sis before moving on to the main purpose of this entry, she is a scholar athlete at UCONN that regularly achieved academic honors while playing an integral role on the UCONN Women’s Field Hockey team.  Her team was a national contender every year during her 4 year career as a top point scoring forward and her college career culminated in a trip to the NCAA Final Four where she and her teammates played heroically and inspiring despite a painful defeat before the Championship game.  She will likely move on to motivate more young minds to follow her path of success as she enriches their math skills and teaches them the importance of perseverance and teamwork by coaching them in her sport of choice.  I hope to convince her to join me here in Paterson so we can achieve great things together but I know she will have a great, positive effect on the whatever community is lucky enough to acquire her services in a year.

My sister being introduced on the jumbotron at the University of Louisville for the NCAA Final Four this year

So that’s my sister, Cara Silverman.  I’m a proud brother if it wasn’t obvious.

But the point of this article today is to discuss the challenges facing Connecticut’s Public Education system today and how that relates to what we are doing here in Paterson.

Connecticut Commissioner
of Education
Stefan Pryor

Connecticut’s Neag School of Education chose to have the State Education Commissioner, Stefan Pryor, give the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony.  This was a most pleasant unexpected bonus that I was to be treated to.

Commissioner Pryor, hands down, knows what he is doing.  That became clear to me the moment he began his speech as he started off preaching the very thing I am preaching now about Paterson and America, that working together works. (great minds, right?)

Mr. Pryor began with a flashback to the fateful day of September 11^th, 2001 and how we all came together as a nation and as a world, even if just for a short time.  The point was we had people from all over the planet offering us, the powerful nation in the world, aid and support in our time of crisis and need.  People with less than us…  Giving to us out of kindness and compassion…  That’s the type of culture this website is hoping to foster.

Then the Commissioner moved on to the Tsunami that struck Indonesia and surrounding areas in 2004.  The world support for the tragedy was overwhelming to the tune of over 14 billion dollars in humanitarian aid. 

Hurricane Katrina, despite the missteps taken early on in the crisis, again was another case of people banding together to repair a community following a natural disaster.  New Orleans and other southern areas have been rejuvenated quite admirably in recent years.

The earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami in Japan represent more cases of people banding together for the common good.

I think you get the point about working together now.  But what exactly does this have to do with Paterson and our mission here?  Here is the Connecticut Educational Reform Proposal for 2012:

Look familiar?  It should.  Focus on Early Childhood Education, focus on low performing schools (Priority Schools as Dr. Evans calls them), expanding working and proven models that we can learn from, removing barriers to success (i.e. socioeconomic factors), developing excellent teachers and administration.  They are missing increased parent engagement and involvement from their main sections but that is located further down in the Additional Reforms section in the Proposal PDF.  The point?  Well this state is taking steps just like we are here in Paterson, to adopt the practices that we know are proven strategies that work in education today.

After hearing him speak just once and subsequently looking up more information as I always do when trying to improve my knowledge of someone or something, I learned that Mr. Pryor has been successful in nearly all the tasks he has been responsible for as a professional.  Reading further, I learned that one of the main sources of information for this proposed reform plan is from gathering information from sources of all kinds, teachers, principals, leading education researchers, best practices, most effective school models, students themselves, etc…  After gathering the information, this plan was developed and now results will be based upon execution.  This is of course, the responsible and logical course of action in education these days.

Like NJ and Paterson in general, Connecticut has a very large achievement gap, in fact, Connecticut has the largest achievement gap in the entire nation.  That means that despite having some of the best performing schools to speak of, they also produce some of the worst performing schools in the country as well.  We can relate to that here in Paterson and NJ. 

But as the Commissioner made clear in his speech to the new graduates ready to embark on their own missions in the field of education, we have the human capacity to work together toward the goal of closing that achievement gap.  He let it be known with zero doubt attached, that we will close that gap and we will do so because we worked together.  Everyone. 

Many will point to Connecticut, or NJ, or Paterson, or anywhere else and begin stating reasons why this won’t work, because of this, or because of that, or that, or that, etc...  That conversation does not fit in the future here because the fact is, those are the conversations that have left us in a state of inaction, static progress, and ultimately, those are the conversations that have failed our innocent youth for so long.

Today, we again turn the conversation toward what is possible and we fortunately already know thanks to this website, Paterson, and the words of Commissioner Stefan Pryor, that we can pretty much do anything if we all band together for the common good.

Here in Paterson, let’s keep working together, keep supporting all the positive things happening around our school district led by our Superintendent Dr. Evans, our school board Commissioners, our Parents, our Teachers, and of course, our Students.  Lets continue showing the governor’s office how we are doing things the right way in Paterson.  We know the strategies we are employing are the ones proven to work according to all the latest educational research, lets stay with those strategies and execute them like we know we can.  By working at it together.

And then lets again show as many communities as possible across the country exactly how to do things the right way in education and more…

Story on the amazing turnaround at School #28 will be up before week's end along with other exciting announcements for Paterson!  Stay tuned and keep spreading the word!