[Music]
how do you guys in this room have heard
the traditional African proverb it takes
a village to raise a child anyone and
that is so apparent that it in today’s
society when we think about this that it
really does especially we were talking
about the maturation of our youth you
see the mysterion tribe in Africa they
are very well invested into their
culture and one other thing that’s very
empowering with them is they are known
in Africa is one of the most fierce
tribes known in Kenya and one of the
things they do when they go and greet
each other face to face the first thing
they always say is Caesarea Nagar a
which means are the children well and
regardless on the other end of that that
individual in that village will respond
even if they don’t have children with
yes the children are well you see that
is the pinnacle of everything right now
that makes their village so successful
is because it is about their children
they understand the dynamics of how
important it is to invest in the
educational means the communication
between their children you see in
America right now our village is more
important than ever
you see we’re growing up in this
fast-paced data-driven information world
and students today in school they’re met
with a myriad of challenges and
opportunities and many families and
support systems they don’t have that
village so what happens well let’s look
at that most of us we’ve grown up in
unstandardized world would you say we
were at different clothes we think
different thoughts
we’d different foods but Luna comes to
education many of us are measured based
upon our standardized test scores and
grade level standards that we are
expected to achieve greatness in order
to succeed so what happens think about
this what happens when you take
child from an unstandardized upbringing
and you put them into a standardized
system well that is where the
achievement gap is born and today I want
to shine some light on really what can
we do everyone in the crowd everyone
watching this on YouTube what can we do
that’s not gonna cost a lot of money or
time or effort but to make every one of
us whether in we’re in middle school
high school a parent a grandparent to
get up and make change to help this
close this gap because this is affecting
us everywhere especially within the
United States you see what’s very
interesting as I started doing research
on this because I wanted to make sure
that AI was prepared and B I knew what I
was talking about so I looked at some of
the statistics and one of them I formed
statistics I looked up was under the
McKinsey company looking at on a global
scale in terms of economics what the
impact of the achievement gap was
happening happening and did you know
that lagging achievement can be seen as
early as fourth grade fourth grade is
one of the strongest predictors in terms
of student success at graduation rates
in high school as well as college
graduation not to mention lifetime
earnings and fourth grade and it’s also
shown that individuals lagging in
performance on standardized tests in
fourth grade will also be behind an
eighth grade and if a student is in
behind in eighth grade they will enter
in most cases the job force with lower
pain and lower skilled jobs all based
upon the data that was shown you see in
addition to that when we look at
individuals who are less educated we see
higher incidence rates of morbidity like
obesity diabetes cardiovascular disease
you know I was at a TEDx conference up
in the Silicon Valley at the Harker
school and I was asked to be a mentor
and it was a great experience because I
was taking an uber home and while I was
waiting for the Hooper’s she pulled
right up and I got in the back seat she
was a 71 year old after
an American lady and she was full of
life because the minute I got in the car
I knew I was gonna have a good time
because we were talking and she asked me
what I did and I started talking about
education and I could see in the
rearview mirror her eye started to well
up a little bit like she started to
close off but then she opened up right
away and my goal with every individual
that I come in contact with whether it
be personally or professionally as to
how can I learn from this person what
can I get out of this person that will
make me a better person so she started
talking about okay I grew up I was one
of five siblings my parents died in a
freak accident when I was four years old
and I grew up with my grandparents in a
farm in the south of Mississippi and my
grandparents were the ones who raised me
and my job and my grandfather told me
was the minute I started living on the
farm that I was to help raise my
siblings brothers and sisters as well as
I was supposed to contribute to the
livestock on her so she knew as early as
first grade she wanted to be different
than her brothers and sisters so she’s
decided the first day just like her
friend she was going to go to school
first grade so she got ready went to
school the first day and she came back
home to tell everyone about it and when
she got home her grandfather beat her
because he said that education is not
going to help support in terms of
raising your brothers and sisters and
will not put food on the table by
raising our livestock and you will not
go to school and so her brothers and
sisters never went to school
but for eleven years she snuck out of
the house every morning she went to
school she didn’t miss one day of school
and she made a pact for their brothers
and sisters that when she got a real job
she would help support them and get them
out of that same situation and so they
lied for her for 11 years straight she
was the first person in her life and her
family to graduate from high school she
even went on to go to graduate from
college now interesting enough to say I
made mention a point about less educated
individuals higher rates of morbidity
toover brothers died at 20 and 22 from
Kearney
arrests due to being extremely
overweight both of her sisters died in
the early 30s due to diabetes from being
extremely overweight she contribute that
because to that that the students they
were taught her to take care of herself
while her brothers and sisters they
never went to the doctor they never got
themselves checked out because they just
she can’t claims weren’t educated enough
to know what their well being and how
the system worked you see these are some
empowering stories when I look at the
achievement gap and this is one example
of a family gap you know it’s similar in
a similar vein I wanted to start looking
at in my own work what happens when
opportunity is faced with a challenge
the students really have a chance its
failure destined for them so what what I
do for work basically in a nutshell is I
work bringing communities together I
want to really focus on getting kids
primarily from underserved communities
into college and that’s really what it’s
about and so one night I was having a
parent night and this really really
opened my eyes up to what’s going on
within the educational system and this
isn’t something I’m going to point the
fingers at teachers administrators
regret not even parents because what
happened was that night kind of changed
my life I got there early to set up and
the design for the night was to have a
parent night to have bring the community
together bring people in from
professional businesses bring people in
from City Council bring people in to
show support to show parents from
first-generation backgrounds that hey
kids have a chance so what happened was
I brought them in and as I was setting
up about a about an hour prior to I saw
in the corner of the distance this mom
and her daughter walk in and I was so
excited because who shows up early to
any sort of a sort of event so I walked
directly to her because she sat in the
back and I stuck my hand out and I
looked down and I was excited I said
thank you for coming my name is Dustin
and she looked at me and she didn’t
return the favor she didn’t stick out
her hand and so I was a little off guard
but she did do something that kind of
caught me off guard
she took her glasses off she said
something that is still reverberating in
my head
she said why am I here why is this
important and first thing I wanted to
say is I want to say yeah it’s important
but I didn’t come out that way I kind of
took a step back and I said well you’re
here because we’re driven to a college
readiness night your daughter took a
practice assessment with us and we’re
really setting you up for success and
ways to pay for college figuring out
what is the best track whether it’s
college or career for your daughter and
she said I don’t want my daughter going
to college it’s too expensive and I want
her to get a job immediately after
graduating in high school in order to
contribute to society and once again I
took a step back and I had to realize
that there is some sort of disconnect
there and it’s the educational knowledge
that she is lacking so I said here’s the
deal completely understand but since
you’re here do you mind going in great
you know if you want to grab some food
take a seat spend a few minutes to see
if you get anything from here I’d love
your feedback at the end so I gave the
presentation that night and she and
everybody was filtering saying hey thank
you when they were leaving and I noticed
that back corner of my eyes she was
still sitting in the chair but I didn’t
know because my vision is not very good
and I didn’t know if she was laughing
crying angry so I was like okay I’m just
gonna start packing up my stuff and
hopefully she got something out of the
night but I saw her coming towards me
and I was just I was a little timid and
she came up to me and she asked she said
excuse me I said yes and she stuck out
her hand she said hi my name is Ann and
he opened my eyes tonight and I kind of
got what she was saying I kind of was
figuring out and she told me that this
was the first time in 17 years but from
being a single mother raising three kids
and not being home for the last four
years to read books for her daughter
before bed or their other siblings that
she was able to look at her daughter’s
transcripts and realize that she had a
4.6 GPA she was number two out of seven
hundred ninety-eight kids in her class
her score on the practice SAT was in the
98th percentile for the first time
without any preparation and did not
realize the opportunity that her
daughter had sitting right there because
she thought her path was set to send her
into the working force and if you look
at that for perspective that’s what’s
going on with this isn’t even GAAP
there’s a multitude of it other things
that we’re looking at but work comes
down to right now as it comes down to
our village it comes down to the local
support it comes down to making change
within our village it’s not it’s not
looking at a teacher and pointing your
finger and expecting them to fix the
situation even they’re there they are
working on areas to really improve test
scores improve the system but it’s about
us it’s even if you’re a middle school
student you’re a high school student
you’re a parent anyone everyone can make
a change you know one of the things that
I looked at and well in my in my last
story that I’ll leave you with I work
with one of the most beautiful schools
that I’ve ever been to it’s in South
Central Los Angeles it is has the state
of the art swimming pool the most
amazing track and field system I’ve ever
seen it makes me want to run but I don’t
it’s amazing
the classrooms have the most amazing
technology and six years ago it was the
lowest performing High School in
California it was ridden by gang
violence
it was so bad the school almost went
back to the state it was atrocious they
were getting rid of teachers left and
right rehiring trying to get talent on
campus the enrollment for a school that
was built for about 2500 students was
dwindling down to about 900 a thousand
students no one wanted to go there so
what happened was they hired a new
principal and he said my mission is to
help close the gap to figuring out how
we can get students here so what he did
is he started recruiting he picked out
the most amazing things that school had
which were academics and sports and he
also looked at the
the dance because they had a huge dance
studio so art and dance and so one of
the things he decided to do is he would
take every one of these core groups the
football team the band the cheerleaders
and he would walk take them down once a
year and take them down this huge strip
down the middle of the city to the
middle school and show them how amazing
high school was how they’ve changed and
what happened is over those years more
students started applying to get into
that school this is just a small example
of how you’re able to close the gap
by not putting a lot of money or effort
in time it’s just bringing a community
together I mean when you look at things
you look at yourself how can I make an
impact and the impact is within yourself
the impact is getting if you want to
make a big change it’s finding a school
a local school within your community and
figuring out what you can do to
contribute I mean even business owners
now when you look at powerful cities one
of the things that the schools do is to
make them unique is well to make them
less unique it’s a lot of
underperforming schools one of the
things that they like to do to make to
solve the situation pretty instantly is
they’ll get rid of when test scores are
bad they’ll get rid of things like art
drama Spanish and they’ll replace it
with things like test prep in order to
hit the mass means of the students to
get test scores up those district and
state mandated tests so they’re able to
obviously meet the middle but when you
look here you look for just a few zip
codes around those affluent schools
they’re not getting rid of Spanish
they’re adding Mandarin they’re adding
French to the curriculum that makes them
stand out so Ryan ploor with everyone
here today is it if you really want to
make an impact schools are the first
line of defense and we must know that in
terms of ending poverty and in terms of
closing the achievement gap so if
there’s anything you want to do today to
help contribute to this society to
change the way that people are
graduating entering the workforce with
higher paid and higher skilled jobs
changing the way that our our world in
our economy is dealing with education
know that it’s up to you find that
school bring that community you want to
see within that school and you will make
a difference because sitting around
expecting it to happen and blaming other
people it’s not gonna be there it’s not
the result it’s not the reason so thank
you
how do you guys in this room have heard
the traditional African proverb it takes
a village to raise a child anyone and
that is so apparent that it in today’s
society when we think about this that it
really does especially we were talking
about the maturation of our youth you
see the mysterion tribe in Africa they
are very well invested into their
culture and one other thing that’s very
empowering with them is they are known
in Africa is one of the most fierce
tribes known in Kenya and one of the
things they do when they go and greet
each other face to face the first thing
they always say is Caesarea Nagar a
which means are the children well and
regardless on the other end of that that
individual in that village will respond
even if they don’t have children with
yes the children are well you see that
is the pinnacle of everything right now
that makes their village so successful
is because it is about their children
they understand the dynamics of how
important it is to invest in the
educational means the communication
between their children you see in
America right now our village is more
important than ever
you see we’re growing up in this
fast-paced data-driven information world
and students today in school they’re met
with a myriad of challenges and
opportunities and many families and
support systems they don’t have that
village so what happens well let’s look
at that most of us we’ve grown up in
unstandardized world would you say we
were at different clothes we think
different thoughts
we’d different foods but Luna comes to
education many of us are measured based
upon our standardized test scores and
grade level standards that we are
expected to achieve greatness in order
to succeed so what happens think about
this what happens when you take
child from an unstandardized upbringing
and you put them into a standardized
system well that is where the
achievement gap is born and today I want
to shine some light on really what can
we do everyone in the crowd everyone
watching this on YouTube what can we do
that’s not gonna cost a lot of money or
time or effort but to make every one of
us whether in we’re in middle school
high school a parent a grandparent to
get up and make change to help this
close this gap because this is affecting
us everywhere especially within the
United States you see what’s very
interesting as I started doing research
on this because I wanted to make sure
that AI was prepared and B I knew what I
was talking about so I looked at some of
the statistics and one of them I formed
statistics I looked up was under the
McKinsey company looking at on a global
scale in terms of economics what the
impact of the achievement gap was
happening happening and did you know
that lagging achievement can be seen as
early as fourth grade fourth grade is
one of the strongest predictors in terms
of student success at graduation rates
in high school as well as college
graduation not to mention lifetime
earnings and fourth grade and it’s also
shown that individuals lagging in
performance on standardized tests in
fourth grade will also be behind an
eighth grade and if a student is in
behind in eighth grade they will enter
in most cases the job force with lower
pain and lower skilled jobs all based
upon the data that was shown you see in
addition to that when we look at
individuals who are less educated we see
higher incidence rates of morbidity like
obesity diabetes cardiovascular disease
you know I was at a TEDx conference up
in the Silicon Valley at the Harker
school and I was asked to be a mentor
and it was a great experience because I
was taking an uber home and while I was
waiting for the Hooper’s she pulled
right up and I got in the back seat she
was a 71 year old after
an American lady and she was full of
life because the minute I got in the car
I knew I was gonna have a good time
because we were talking and she asked me
what I did and I started talking about
education and I could see in the
rearview mirror her eye started to well
up a little bit like she started to
close off but then she opened up right
away and my goal with every individual
that I come in contact with whether it
be personally or professionally as to
how can I learn from this person what
can I get out of this person that will
make me a better person so she started
talking about okay I grew up I was one
of five siblings my parents died in a
freak accident when I was four years old
and I grew up with my grandparents in a
farm in the south of Mississippi and my
grandparents were the ones who raised me
and my job and my grandfather told me
was the minute I started living on the
farm that I was to help raise my
siblings brothers and sisters as well as
I was supposed to contribute to the
livestock on her so she knew as early as
first grade she wanted to be different
than her brothers and sisters so she’s
decided the first day just like her
friend she was going to go to school
first grade so she got ready went to
school the first day and she came back
home to tell everyone about it and when
she got home her grandfather beat her
because he said that education is not
going to help support in terms of
raising your brothers and sisters and
will not put food on the table by
raising our livestock and you will not
go to school and so her brothers and
sisters never went to school
but for eleven years she snuck out of
the house every morning she went to
school she didn’t miss one day of school
and she made a pact for their brothers
and sisters that when she got a real job
she would help support them and get them
out of that same situation and so they
lied for her for 11 years straight she
was the first person in her life and her
family to graduate from high school she
even went on to go to graduate from
college now interesting enough to say I
made mention a point about less educated
individuals higher rates of morbidity
toover brothers died at 20 and 22 from
Kearney
arrests due to being extremely
overweight both of her sisters died in
the early 30s due to diabetes from being
extremely overweight she contribute that
because to that that the students they
were taught her to take care of herself
while her brothers and sisters they
never went to the doctor they never got
themselves checked out because they just
she can’t claims weren’t educated enough
to know what their well being and how
the system worked you see these are some
empowering stories when I look at the
achievement gap and this is one example
of a family gap you know it’s similar in
a similar vein I wanted to start looking
at in my own work what happens when
opportunity is faced with a challenge
the students really have a chance its
failure destined for them so what what I
do for work basically in a nutshell is I
work bringing communities together I
want to really focus on getting kids
primarily from underserved communities
into college and that’s really what it’s
about and so one night I was having a
parent night and this really really
opened my eyes up to what’s going on
within the educational system and this
isn’t something I’m going to point the
fingers at teachers administrators
regret not even parents because what
happened was that night kind of changed
my life I got there early to set up and
the design for the night was to have a
parent night to have bring the community
together bring people in from
professional businesses bring people in
from City Council bring people in to
show support to show parents from
first-generation backgrounds that hey
kids have a chance so what happened was
I brought them in and as I was setting
up about a about an hour prior to I saw
in the corner of the distance this mom
and her daughter walk in and I was so
excited because who shows up early to
any sort of a sort of event so I walked
directly to her because she sat in the
back and I stuck my hand out and I
looked down and I was excited I said
thank you for coming my name is Dustin
and she looked at me and she didn’t
return the favor she didn’t stick out
her hand and so I was a little off guard
but she did do something that kind of
caught me off guard
she took her glasses off she said
something that is still reverberating in
my head
she said why am I here why is this
important and first thing I wanted to
say is I want to say yeah it’s important
but I didn’t come out that way I kind of
took a step back and I said well you’re
here because we’re driven to a college
readiness night your daughter took a
practice assessment with us and we’re
really setting you up for success and
ways to pay for college figuring out
what is the best track whether it’s
college or career for your daughter and
she said I don’t want my daughter going
to college it’s too expensive and I want
her to get a job immediately after
graduating in high school in order to
contribute to society and once again I
took a step back and I had to realize
that there is some sort of disconnect
there and it’s the educational knowledge
that she is lacking so I said here’s the
deal completely understand but since
you’re here do you mind going in great
you know if you want to grab some food
take a seat spend a few minutes to see
if you get anything from here I’d love
your feedback at the end so I gave the
presentation that night and she and
everybody was filtering saying hey thank
you when they were leaving and I noticed
that back corner of my eyes she was
still sitting in the chair but I didn’t
know because my vision is not very good
and I didn’t know if she was laughing
crying angry so I was like okay I’m just
gonna start packing up my stuff and
hopefully she got something out of the
night but I saw her coming towards me
and I was just I was a little timid and
she came up to me and she asked she said
excuse me I said yes and she stuck out
her hand she said hi my name is Ann and
he opened my eyes tonight and I kind of
got what she was saying I kind of was
figuring out and she told me that this
was the first time in 17 years but from
being a single mother raising three kids
and not being home for the last four
years to read books for her daughter
before bed or their other siblings that
she was able to look at her daughter’s
transcripts and realize that she had a
4.6 GPA she was number two out of seven
hundred ninety-eight kids in her class
her score on the practice SAT was in the
98th percentile for the first time
without any preparation and did not
realize the opportunity that her
daughter had sitting right there because
she thought her path was set to send her
into the working force and if you look
at that for perspective that’s what’s
going on with this isn’t even GAAP
there’s a multitude of it other things
that we’re looking at but work comes
down to right now as it comes down to
our village it comes down to the local
support it comes down to making change
within our village it’s not it’s not
looking at a teacher and pointing your
finger and expecting them to fix the
situation even they’re there they are
working on areas to really improve test
scores improve the system but it’s about
us it’s even if you’re a middle school
student you’re a high school student
you’re a parent anyone everyone can make
a change you know one of the things that
I looked at and well in my in my last
story that I’ll leave you with I work
with one of the most beautiful schools
that I’ve ever been to it’s in South
Central Los Angeles it is has the state
of the art swimming pool the most
amazing track and field system I’ve ever
seen it makes me want to run but I don’t
it’s amazing
the classrooms have the most amazing
technology and six years ago it was the
lowest performing High School in
California it was ridden by gang
violence
it was so bad the school almost went
back to the state it was atrocious they
were getting rid of teachers left and
right rehiring trying to get talent on
campus the enrollment for a school that
was built for about 2500 students was
dwindling down to about 900 a thousand
students no one wanted to go there so
what happened was they hired a new
principal and he said my mission is to
help close the gap to figuring out how
we can get students here so what he did
is he started recruiting he picked out
the most amazing things that school had
which were academics and sports and he
also looked at the
the dance because they had a huge dance
studio so art and dance and so one of
the things he decided to do is he would
take every one of these core groups the
football team the band the cheerleaders
and he would walk take them down once a
year and take them down this huge strip
down the middle of the city to the
middle school and show them how amazing
high school was how they’ve changed and
what happened is over those years more
students started applying to get into
that school this is just a small example
of how you’re able to close the gap
by not putting a lot of money or effort
in time it’s just bringing a community
together I mean when you look at things
you look at yourself how can I make an
impact and the impact is within yourself
the impact is getting if you want to
make a big change it’s finding a school
a local school within your community and
figuring out what you can do to
contribute I mean even business owners
now when you look at powerful cities one
of the things that the schools do is to
make them unique is well to make them
less unique it’s a lot of
underperforming schools one of the
things that they like to do to make to
solve the situation pretty instantly is
they’ll get rid of when test scores are
bad they’ll get rid of things like art
drama Spanish and they’ll replace it
with things like test prep in order to
hit the mass means of the students to
get test scores up those district and
state mandated tests so they’re able to
obviously meet the middle but when you
look here you look for just a few zip
codes around those affluent schools
they’re not getting rid of Spanish
they’re adding Mandarin they’re adding
French to the curriculum that makes them
stand out so Ryan ploor with everyone
here today is it if you really want to
make an impact schools are the first
line of defense and we must know that in
terms of ending poverty and in terms of
closing the achievement gap so if
there’s anything you want to do today to
help contribute to this society to
change the way that people are
graduating entering the workforce with
higher paid and higher skilled jobs
changing the way that our our world in
our economy is dealing with education
know that it’s up to you find that
school bring that community you want to
see within that school and you will make
a difference because sitting around
expecting it to happen and blaming other
people it’s not gonna be there it’s not
the result it’s not the reason so thank
you
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