Contributor

Cynthia G. (Cindy) Brown, Vice President for Education Policy, Center for American Progress

Biography provided by participant

Cynthia G. Brown is Vice President for Education Policy at the Center for American Progress and served as Director, Renewing our Schools, Securing our Future National Task Force on Public Education, a joint initiative of the Center and the Institute for America's Future. Cindy has spent over 35 years working in a variety of professional positions addressing high-quality, equitable public education. Prior to joining the Center, she was an independent education consultant. From 1986 through September 2001, Brown served as Director of the Resource Center on Educational Equity of the Council of Chief State School Officers. She was appointed by President Carter as the first Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education (1980). Prior to that position, she served as Principal Deputy of the HEW Office for Civil Rights. She has also worked for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law and the Children's Defense Fund.

Recent Responses

October 19, 2009 11:41 AM

RE: How Should Teacher Effectiveness Be Assessed?

Assessing teacher effectiveness is obviously not an easy and straightforward endeavor, but developing a robust system for evaluating effectiveness is probably the most important educational reform a district can undertake. As The Widget Effect helpfully noted, we can't continue to treat teachers as interchangeable parts if we want to attract and retain talented people in the profession, help them improve their practice, and provide additional rewards and responsibilities to those who we hope will remain in the profession and help their colleagues to improve. While there are few exemplary systems, there are a number of important principles for developing a… Read more

October 13, 2009 07:34 AM

RE: Should i3 Fund Soften Eligibility Requirements?

It makes great sense for the Department of Education to ask Congress to modify the requirement that school districts applying for Innovation Fund grants make AYP for two years and such an action would not weaken accountability. Districts that have been identified as in need of improvement obviously face very serious challenges in substantially improving student achievement. For districts to meet the challenges they need a clear vision and sense of purpose, a sound theory of change, creativity in designing a comprehensive and aligned set of actions, and a leadership team that is persistent and focused on implementing new approaches.… Read more

September 28, 2009 11:00 AM

RE: Could Common State Standards Impact Quality?

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Common state standards—if they are rigorous—could absolutely impact the quality of education in this country. For too long the US has allowed different expectations for its students based on where they live as well as more insidious factors like race, income gender, primary language, and disability. Requiring state standards was a step forward, but large, place-based differences in expectations persist. Only common standards can rectify this.… Read more

September 21, 2009 01:56 PM

RE: What Is The Solution To The High School Dropout Crisis?

Preventing students from dropping out in the first place is a common-sense priority. But we must be thoughtful about how to better meet the needs of those who have already fallen through the cracks of the public school system. A recent WestEd report illustrates that dropping out is not necessarily a permanent condition—it’s not uncommon for students to re-enroll one or more times before dropping out completely. States and districts need to re-think their dropout recovery strategies to employ a series of flexible interventions to meet the unique needs of students who have left school, including a number of potential… Read more

September 14, 2009 01:50 PM

RE: How Can College Completion Rates Be Improved?

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} One of the primary ways to boost college completion rates is to improve students' preparation for college while in high school. There are a number of indicators that students are not sufficiently prepared to succeed in college. The ACT sets benchmark scores for college readiness and in 2009 found 67% of test takers were prepared in English, 42% were prepared in mathematics, and 53% were prepared in reading.… Read more

September 8, 2009 12:15 PM

RE: Has The P21 Movement Succeeded?

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} As my colleague Raegen Miller points out, the forces that make the P21 movement relevant are still at work (see Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane's 2004 book, The New Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market, for a fuller treatment of this subject). At bottom, we're talking about Moore's Law: the cost of a fixed amount of computing power halves every two years… Read more

August 10, 2009 11:35 AM

RE: Should Students Be Paid To Learn?

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} It's pretty easy to beat up on the idea of paying students to learn. Perhaps the most common approach is to invoke a golden age when children walked eleven miles uphill in the snow for the chance to glean the benefits of public education. Another is to ignore the fact that many families, especially in wealthy suburban communities, implement their own pay-for-performance programs: direct cash payments for grades, access to… Read more

August 3, 2009 10:22 AM

RE: Are The 'Race To The Top' Requirements Fair?

It is fair for The Race to the Top eligibility criteria to require that states remove prohibitions on linking student achievement data to individual teachers and principals for the purpose of evaluating their performance. But there also needs to be fairness in the evaluation process that states and districts establish. Hopefully, the Department will consider the quality of evaluation processes as they review state applications for funding. The Race to the Top program is a competitive grant program—the largest ever for pre-K-12 education, so it's appropriate to have specific criteria that states must meet in order to win the competition.… Read more

July 27, 2009 01:34 PM

RE: How Can We Close The Achievement Gap?

Why aren't we closing the achievement gap? In short, because we’ve never been serious enough about doing it. Part of the answer has to do with what we mean by "we." The U.S. has the most de-centralized education system of any nation with a highly-developed economy. We have a history of segregation and discrimination that has terrible lingering affects even though overt discrimination has subsided. We also fund our schools more inequitably than other developed countries with too little regard to targeting funds on students with the greatest needs. This is part of the price of having a federalist… Read more

July 20, 2009 10:04 AM

RE: Do Schools Need Independent Auditors?

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Misleading reporting of student achievement gains certainly isn’t new. Remember the Lake Wobegon scandal of the late 1980s when most students in every state scored above average? We can thank John Jacob Cannell, a West Virginia doctor for exposing this nationally. Back then the test scores of choice were norm reference tests. At least we’ve progressed to measuring student achievement against a standard. But there is… Read more

July 6, 2009 11:21 AM

RE: Is 'Mayoral Control' The Answer For Urban Schools?

Realizing significant achievement gains is about more than change in local governance structure to mayoral control, though it may well help. It seems to have in Chicago, Boston, New York City, and maybe Washington, DC. But results in Atlanta and Charlotte-Mecklenburg show gains must be about more than mayors eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/37/0e/c3.pdf. They are likely about school boards and superintendents doing several things cooperatively and in tandem—a coherent vision for improvement, wise and regular use of data, aggressive efforts to recruit and support talented teachers and principals, strong and transparent accountability, aligned curriculum, and a general laser like focus on building… Read more

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