DCPS students on Oprah show

By D2K

On April 11, 2006, I was on the Oprah show. There was a 2 minute clip that a schoolmate and I were in, Failing Grade: Shame of Capitol Hill, about the DCPS school system. The show was about the inequalities of education in the U.S. The show compared the schools in the country with the highest graduation rate to schools with the lowest.

I am a youth organizer for the Youth Education Alliance. We worked in partnership with Critical Exposure  to take pictures of our school. Critical Exposure supplied a group of DCPS students with cameras and taught us about documentary photography. Then we took pictures of our schools and used them for display at the School Modernization Rally.

 

I’m proud to have been on the Oprah show. I feel as if I got my point across to the rest of the world; it makes my job worthwhile. A lot of people I know saw the show and, said “I saw you on Oprah,” so it was pretty exciting. I feel like a celebrity.

The fact that there are very poor schools is a serious issue. According to the American Youth Policy Forum, a high school dropout earns $10,000 less per year than a high school graduate. Over a lifetime, the graduate will earn a million dollars more than the dropout. Even students that stay in school are not being prepared enough. "Of kids who are going to college, more than 40 percent are doing remedial work," says Melinda Gates, who was on the Oprah show talking about education.

In the future, the media should do more for our schools by going in and talking to students and looking at the conditions of schools. I hope this is the start of a new beginning for under-funded schools across the nation.