African American Community Education Partnership Summit: Focusing on Reading & Mathematics Achievement. Position Paper.

This document was produced as a position paper for background for a summit convened by the San Francisco Unified School District (California) to focus on the education and achievement of African American students. The Education Partnership Summit had the principal goal of developing strategies and techniques to increase the mathematics and reading performance of African American students in the school district. A secondary goal was to strengthen parental, community, peer, and teacher support for the achievement of African American students to equal the national average within 2 years. In addition to the principal address by the Superintendent of Schools and a plenary address by the Mayor of San Francisco, the Summit was to feature five major workshops, focusing reading and mathematics achievement, student attitudes and participation, parent participation, and increasing self-esteem and student achievement. The following sections provide information on topics to be explored in the Summit: (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Education Summit Workshops"; (3) "The African American Community and the San Francisco Unified School District"; (4) "A Brief Overview"; (5) "Judge Orrick and the Consent Decree"; (6) "Pursuing Educational Reform and Increasing Student Achievement": (7) "The Effects of Poverty on Educational Achievement"; (8) "Overcoming Poverty"; (9) "Educational Failure and Imprisonment"; (10) "The Economic Rewards of Educational Achievement"; (11) "Effective Administrative Leadership"; (12) "Educational and Political Partnership To Increase Student Achievement"; (13) "Parental Involvement and Student Success"; and (14) "References." Appendixes include a list African American youth achievers in the school district, a description of successful program efforts to support African American youth achievers, and lists of Summit committee members and San Francisco Unified School District's Board of Education members. (Contains 31 references.) (SLD)