Excerpted from Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ remarks Monday night at the annual Success Academy fundraiser gala.
Let me unequivocally put into the public record that I am here today because I strongly and unequivocally support good, high-quality public education — and that is what [founder and CEO] Eva Moskowitz and Success consistently deliver.
Frederick Douglass, the great thinker and abolitionist statesman, once made the observation that it is easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men. I think perhaps one of the most effective and efficient things that we can do as a nation is to make sure that we provide every child with a first-rate, high-quality education.
And yet, we understand as we look across the city, the state and the country, there are neighborhoods filled with broken men and broken women who the public school system failed to adequately prepare for the challenges of the 21st-century economy.
And as a representative in the United States Congress, as someone born and raised in Central Brooklyn, who came of age at a time when the crack cocaine epidemic was ravaging the community where I lived, I know firsthand the tragedy faced by many of these communities that have been deprived, as well as the possibility and the opportunity that a first-class education can provide.
I’ve now got the honor of representing the 8th Congressional District, one of the most diverse districts in the country. A third of the people that I serve were born outside of the United States. Folks from all over the world come to Brooklyn and Queens to pursue the American Dream.
I’ve got the privilege of representing African-Americans, Caribbean-Americans, Latinos, South Asians, the Orthodox Jewish community. Italian-Americans, Turkish-Americans, Bangladeshi-Americans and many, many others.
And the common strand that runs through this gorgeous mosaic is that every parent in every community simply wants to make sure that their child can have a better life.
And yet in many communities, such as those that I represent, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and East New York, in Coney Island, the public-school system has failed generation after generation after generation — essentially dooming these students to life sentences of disadvantage and despair.
And that’s why I’m so thankful for the Success Academy, which right now has three schools in the district that I serve, two in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
And last year, one of those Success schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant, in the toughest part of one of the toughest neighborhoods in a tough city, that school, those students performed in the top 1 percent of every school in the state of New York. The top 1 percent! That should be a 1 percent that all of us can agree on.
These students are excelling in math, excelling in reading, excelling in science, excelling in strategic thinking. And being prepared to excel in life.
I’ve had the opportunity to go visit this school — I wanted to see firsthand how is it possible that you can take a school in one of the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods of New York City and elevate it so its students are performing at the top echelon in New York state.
And the formula seems pretty magical yet straightforward. Extra work. Extra effort. Extra time. Extra attention. Extra resources. Mix it all together, you get something extraordinary, yielding high results, high achievement, high expectations and high aspirations.
The Success Academy has managed to make the extraordinary seem ordinary. And that’s a wonderful standard for all of us to be held to.
Throughout this nation there are folks, in school after school, who don’t have the extraordinary urgent opportunity of a first-rate education. And it seems to me that this is a problem America has to confront.
And what should be clear to everyone is we can’t continue to do the same thing and expect different results. And that’s one of the things that’s special about what the Success Academy has accomplished.
Now, there are people down in Washington and throughout this city and all across the country who think that in America, we don’t have the capacity, the will, the ability to address this problem. But I still believe, as a relatively new member of Congress, that we’ve got the capacity, the ability — I believe in American exceptionalism.
I think we can address this problem, for this generation and for generations to come, and get our students to the other side.