 And last but not least, as we get this panel going, is John Jackson. John is president and CEO of the Shot Foundation for Public Education. He took this position in 2007. After seven years in leadership positions at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, during which he served as his chief policy officer, and prior to that, the National Director of Education. At Shot, John leads the Foundation's efforts to fund and advocate systemic change to address the disparities poor children and children of color face in our nation's schools. Previous to his work at Shot and the NAACP, John was appointed in 1991 by President Clinton to serve as a senior policy advisor in the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. Where is John? There he is. Please welcome John Jackson. Well, I'm glad that I'm here today and that we're all here today having this conversation because I don't know about you. I don't intend to be here. 50 years later talking about the 50th anniversary after the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Report. Because it's clear today that 50 years after the Kerner Report, parental income remains the number one predictor of student outcome. Parental income, not whether or not the school is a traditional public school or charter, not whether or not the school is unionized, not whether or not the school has high standards, but parental income. And it's clear that while we have had a national dialogue over the years around closing the achievement gap, essentially what we are looking at is the product of clear and consistent opportunity gaps. Opportunity gaps that throughout American history and localities, policies and practices, they've been baked into the local policies and practices that are at best baked into at a point of implicit bias at worse racism and hatred. And what are we talking about? Implicit bias, access to affordable housing, access to livable wages, access to public transportation, health care. These are all of the policies that are necessary to provide students an opportunity to learn. We've approached it as if we can provide students an opportunity to learn by only looking at what happens in the learning setting when in actuality it takes both a healthy living and learning environment to provide all students an opportunity to learn. My grandmother used to tell me if you walk past a river and you see a fish barking and a duck laughing, don't ask what's wrong with the fish or the duck, ask what's wrong with the river. But we've only critiqued what's the problem with the students, what's the problem with the parents, what's the problem with the teachers. We haven't critiqued the system. And even more once we separate ourselves from the words that we have learned at fine institutions like George Washington and others. At the core of it, I'm reminded of what a colleague told me, racism is nothing but institutionalized lovelessness. The question is, do we love our young people enough to institutionalize the policies and practices that are necessary to create the types of loving systems that will provide all students an opportunity to learn. So as hate and racism is a dominant theme in our national dialogue today, last week at the Shaw Foundation we launched the Loving Cities Index. And the Loving Cities Index is an analysis of the supports that cities and localities are offering our young people and the cross-sector supports. We did this analysis to look at not what we would call the thermometer data points, those data points that tell us what the existing climate might be. So for example, if we look at the issue of out-of-school suspension, we might say that a city suspends 70% of its students. That's helpful to know. That's a thermometer data point. But we also need to begin to look at the thermostat data points. And those are the data points that much in the same way that you're a thermostat at home, you manipulate it in such a way to produce the ideal climate. We need to know what are those thermostat indicators working within localities. So if we know that the suspension rate is 70% and we know that restorative justice actually helps reduce that, we need to know what percentage of the schools in my locality are practicing restorative justice. And that's what this index is about. Taking an assessment of the supports that are available, the cross-sector supports that are available for students in localities in 10 cities across the country. Our goal is to over the next five years enroll and engage over 50 cities and hope to impact the national tone. But we started with 10 cities, cities like Baltimore, Minneapolis, Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia, Little Rock, Charlotte, as a way to begin to engage cities in the dialogue and the recognition that it takes a cross-sector approach to provide all students an opportunity to learn. And what we found out is on average, the cities only provided 42% of the supports that are necessary to substantively say that all students have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. The range was from 52% in Minneapolis to 39% in Charlotte. The supports that are necessary to provide all students an opportunity to learn. So if there are a few recommendations, I would say the first is this is clear evidence that it is time, that though we are in this unique political moment right now and I do want to call it unique, I reject that this is the norm. We are in a unique political moment. We will see a new day and a new day is coming pretty soon. And in that new day, if we don't have another frame or another way to begin to think about, to offer our young people, then we would have lost an opportunity. And so it is time for us in the new day to transition from a standards-based reform agenda where we ask what are the right standards, what are the right test scores, what are the right thermometer indicators to a supports-based educational agenda. Ask the question, what are the right supports that regardless of where a student is located, what zip code, how do we align those supports and how do we use the only mandatory institution, our public school system, to deliver those supports. Transition from a standards-based to a supports-based. Secondly, I think it is time that we challenge the notion, again, that we can provide students an opportunity to learn by only critiquing what happens within the learning space. But indeed, it takes a healthy living and a healthy learning environment to provide all students a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. And we must begin to assess the supports that are available and create the types of cross-sector tables in order to make that happen. It's not just mayors, superintendents, it's not just superintendents and educators and principals, but it's also mayors, county commissioners, all they have the responsibility to provide students a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. And third, if we're serious about closing the opportunity gap, it's about our relationships. It's about creating loving partnerships, and so we need to create new language. And the language of love is not accountability, assessment, and standards. I don't know about you, I've never had a loved one lean over to me and say, I love the way you assess me. Or you had me at accountability. But indeed, it's about care. When we talk to parents, and Zakiya knows this, and parents and students, they ask, does this system care for my students? Are they committed to my students? Will they provide the capacity and the stability necessary? And so those are the things and the domains that we measure in the Loving Cities Index. Care, the types of access to health care, healthy food, stability, access to affordable housing, access to transportation, commitment, access to the types of AP courses and advanced placement courses, and capacity, resource equity, addressing issues of economic stability, because it is going to take new language to create a new day. And the language is not the language that we've used in the past. You can fake standards. You can manipulate assessments, and they have. But you can't fake love. You cannot fake care, because it's an action word. It requires that you take some level of action. And as my daughter reminded me, my 15-year-old daughter, she said, Daddy, if you love me, you will drop me off at this dance. Now, I used that in Jess, but what she said was, if you love me, I should be able to see it, feel it, and know it. And our greatest tragedy since the current report is, our young people don't feel that we care. They don't feel that we're committed. And that's our challenge. So as we take the next step toward the new day, we have to work to provide all students a fair and substantive opportunity to learn and let them know that we care through the loving systems that we produce. Thank you.