Rethinking Accountability: Zakiyah Ansari
Zakiyah Ansari, the advocacy director of the New York State Alliance for Quality Education, asks whether there has ever been real accountability in communities of poverty and communities of color at the Rethinking Accountability conference hosted by SCOPE in Washington, D.C.
Policymakers; school and district leaders; business, teacher, parent, and civil rights organizations; education foundations; and members of the media gathered June 11 for a conference on Rethinking Accountability: Putting Students and Learning First. The conference discussed how schools, districts, and communities across the nation are charting new paths to student- and learning-focused accountability, and how new approaches are making a difference in improving education.
The conference was hosted by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Sandler Family Foundation.
Ansari has spoken before parents, educators, elected officials, and administrators all across the country about the importance of organizing parents and communities in schools. She is one of the parent voices in the film Parent Power, produced by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Ansari is one of the co-initiators on the recently formed national grassroots movement "Journey for Justice," an emerging alliance currently composed of grassroots community-based organizations from over 20 cities across the United States representing constituencies of youth, parents, and inter-generational organizations who have been impacted by the closing, turnaround, and charter expansion of schools in communities of color.