Last weekend I had the surreal experience of sitting next to mega-rapper Kanye West at a press conference and realizing that we were pretty alike: we both feel strongly about George W. Bush, we both look good in Polo shirts, and most importantly, we're both concerned black men who are trying to get something done about America's education crisis.
ED in '08 recently partnered with The Kanye West Foundation, and I was in Chicago to visit the set of a PSA that Kanye is filming for ED in '08, challenging the presidential candidates to speak up about education. He's eager to use his celebrity and platform to bring attention to this issue -- we agree that the candidates from both parties aren't doing enough to show that K-12 education reform is something that they care about.
Kanye's new album, which will be released on September 11th, is called "Graduation," but that's something that 46% of black males in America will never reach. There are millions of voters who like Kanye are outraged that out of every 100 black kindergarteners, only ten will ever earn a bachelors degree. The same is true for Latino students. This is a national crisis and the failure of the next president to address this problem will be a national tragedy for both social and economic reasons.
Just consider, the poverty rate for families headed by dropouts is more than twice that of families headed by high school graduates, and over a lifetime, dropouts earn $260,000 less than high school graduates and contribute about $60,000 less in federal and state income taxes. More alarming, our economic competitiveness depends on the innovation and skills of our students. America once had the best graduation rate in the world -- today it ranks only 19th among developed countries. The American dream is in danger. Future generations could find themselves without the skills they need to survive in the global economy -- let alone seize the opportunities of tomorrow.
Kanye West is a brilliant artist and a provocative figure in American politics, but by his own admittance, he's not much of a politician. "Politics is a business," he told The Associated Press while we were in Chicago. "I'm more social. I just care about people." That's what the ED in '08 campaign is also about - the millions of kids who will never make it out of high school, or who will graduate without the skills they need to go to college or get a competitive job.
Here's what bothers me -- and what should bother you -- candidates spend an awful lot of time talking about trivial matters, issuing comments and releases about the various twists of press cycle, but offer very little discussion about this national epidemic, something that's not going away any time soon. Are their attention spans that short? Candidates from both parties need to overcome the reluctance to lead on education issues, whether it's because of their ties to special interests or the limitations of their ideology.
Maybe candidates should try to be more like Kanye West, and not concerned about the politics so as much as people. Shouldn't that be the kind of leader we really want?
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