Page 3 - 2024 Feb report

EDUCATION AND SAVING LIVES
We talk a lot about education at JSF. Ted Johnson recognized its potential to change lives and improve communities. Every generation of leadership at JSF has sought to leverage our funding to extend the opportunity of education to disadvantaged people.
When I joined JSF in 2013, I thought I understood this concept. My lens was from the private sector, and I had the basic ideas:
• Educated people are more employable and have greater earning power over their lifetime. Improved employment improves financial stability for themselves and their families, which enables them greater opportunities to use their time, skills and finances to give back to their communities.
• Educated people can better understand and wrestle with social and political issues facing their communities and the world.
• Educationhelpspeoplebetterunderstandothercultures,cultivate empathy, and confront their own biases and blind spots.
• Education offers people a path to become better versions of themselves.
All of these benefits are real. But there’s more. Education can save lives.
Meet Da’Niya. She’s a seventh-grader at The Bedford School in Atlanta, Georgia. Da’Niya shared her story with King, Sharon and me during a site visit. It was compelling and emotional. Not once did Da’Niya mention earning power or career trajectory.
Da’Niya is in her first year at Bedford. She previously attended school in Clayton County, Georgia, a highly underperforming school district. Every day, Da’Niya’s father
works in maintenance at the CDC in Atlanta and drives 40 minutes
to get her to Bedford before heading to work downtown. Due to the family’s financial needs, she receives nearly a full scholarship to attend Bedford.
Robert A. Krause
Da’Niya’s academic skills are far below her cognitive ability and potential. When she came to Bedford, her reading skills were at the fifth percentile, at a mid-second-grade level. Her math scores were at the second percentile on a second-grade level. After four months of intense remediation at Bedford, Da’Niya has progressed to a reading comprehension level of fifth grade. Her math skills have risen to a third-grade level. She has said more than once that, for the first time, she feels like her teachers believe she is capable of learning.
Da’Niya’s classroom success has done more than make her a better student. Through sixth grade, her school and social experiences were dark. She sought to be invisible. Her neurodiversity impacted more than her academic progress — it shaded her identity and isolated her socially. Classroom success has changed that. Da’Niya has had the opportunity to participate on school sports teams for the first time, as she played for the Lady Bears Middle School volleyball and basketball teams. She has a great group of friends, loved participating in last fall’s Color Fun Run and STEM family night, and is super excited about the upcoming middle school dance!
I’ve heard David Flink of Eye to Eye say something to the effect that, “We’re not just teaching kids to read, we’re saving lives.” It’s true. Education does much more than what I understood in 2013, and yes — it’s a powerful force for change.
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