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Citing his numerous accomplishments during more than his 40 years as a professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, Bruce Alexander, Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs and Campus Development at Yale, presented Dr. James P. Comer with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP of Greater New Haven on Saturday, May 14^th at the Yale Commons. The theme of the 94^th Annual Freedom Fund Dinner was “One Nation, One Dream: The Politics and Challenges of Education Reform.

The NAACP also honored Gateway Community College president Dorsey L. Kendrick, Ph.D. with the Susan Moore Lincoln Education Award. Zakiyyah Baker, a social studies teacher at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School, received the NAACP Outstanding Education Award. Baker, who is a Co-op graduate, was named Public School Teacher of the Year in 2010. Co-op is one of the ten Comer Renewal Schools in New Haven.

Breaking with the tradition of having a keynote speech, the NAACP chose instead a three-person panel to respond to questions about education reform posed by master of ceremonies and WTNH anchor, Keith Kountz. The panel included Adrian Fenty, the former mayor of Washington, DC; John DeStefano, Jr., mayor of the City of New Haven; and Dr. Zakiya Smith, a senior policy advisor for education on the White House Domestic Policy Council who replaced Russlynn H. Ali, the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.

Dr. Smith said that one in every three African-American and Latino students graduates from high school, and that closing the achievement gap is no longer a moral imperative but an economic one. “The labor market has changed, and we have to as well,” Smith said. “The country hasn’t done a good job in the area of preparation,” and that “a middle-class lifestyle can no longer be achieved without higher education.”

Mayor DeStefano said that “before there was school reform, there was Jim Comer” who he called “an inspiration and a treasure.” He has made closing the achievement gap and rebuilding the city’s schools as a central focus of his administration. He described the four components of his school change strategy: a portfolio approach to schools; a collaborative approach with the New Haven Federation of Teachers; New Haven Promise, a multi-faceted plan to increase college access and completion; and a community network of support for children and youth “as Jim Comer taught us years ago,” he said.

Fenty, who served as Mayor of the District of Columbia from 2007-11, described a different approach to overhauling the public schools. He quickly “disempowered the school board” and hires Michelle Rhee to be chancellor, giving her broad powers to make sweeping, and often controversial changes, like closing schools and laying off staff. Rhee is prominently featured in the documentary, Waiting for Superman.

After the panel U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal made a surprise, unannounced appearance. He praised Mayor DeStefano as “the best mayor in the United States,” and recognized Dr. Comer’s outstanding contributions to education nationally and locally. Senator Blumenthal singled out Nathan Hale School in New Haven, which he planned to visit on May 16^th, for successfully applying Dr. Comer’s research-based, comprehensive K-12 education reform program grounded in the principles of child, adolescent, and adult development.