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Rudy Crew
Educator
Rudy Crew
Educator
Biography
Former Superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools and former Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools, Dr. Rudy Crew has made it his mission to overhaul and strengthen the educational system in America. From the podium, he draws on his 25 years as a professional educator to galvanize teachers and students to reach for the stars—and grasp them.
A stern but caring taskmaster, Crew's guiding principle has always been to provide the means by which students of all backgrounds can achieve high standards – a principle that informs each of his lectures. To this end, in the course of his rich and varied career, Crew has initiated dozens of reforms, including the adoption of curriculum standards for all schools, the elimination of tenure for principals, and school-based budgeting. For his efforts, he has been honored with numerous awards, including the NAACP Educational Leadership Award, the Arthur Ashe Leadership Award, and the Association of California School Administrators Administrator of the Year Award.
As author of Only Connect: The Way to Save Our Schools, Crew calls on America to meet the challenges of an undereducated and undermotivated workforce increasingly unable to compete with the ambitions of countries such as China and India. A firm believer that the solution lies not in the boardroom, but in the classrooms of our local public schools, he mandates that we need a national commitment to establishing standards of excellence and equity in all our public schools to keep our nation thriving.
On the stage—as in the classroom—Crew's genuine love of teaching makes him an extraordinarily popular figure. He has long believed in passing onto others the opportunities that have been afforded him throughout his childhood and his adult life, for which he credits a father who encouraged him to excel. As the first male in his family to go to college, and as one of the first black students to integrate his undergraduate alma mater, Babson College, Crew is also a passionate and engaging speaker on the importance of education among the poor, and of diversity in the educational system.
Speaker Videos
Occupational Preparedness
Speech Topics
The Education Conversation We Must Have: Schooling, Globalization, & Urban America
For years now, we have been inching along using a myriad of strategies and theories by which to define and ultimately curb low performing schools across the country, particularly in poor and urban communities. Some have deeply informed the practice of teaching and learning, some have been a waste of time, effort and money. As NCLB is considered for reauthorization, questions must be raised as to how another cycle of testing for accountability will support classrooms teachers and their students to avoid falling further behind in the nation and in the world. Are there other ways to frame and respond to these issues in the next decade? And, what happens to these children and to us as a nation if we don't?
Only Connect: The Way to Save Our Schools
The global economy isn't coming. It's here. And America is failing to meet the challenges a flat world presents. Undereducated and under motivated, our workforce is increasingly unable to compete with the ambitions of countries such as China and India, putting our nation's continued prosperity at risk. Dr. Rudy Crew, former Superintendent of the Miami-Dade County Public School system and former chancellor of New York City schools, believes there is a solution, but we won't find in a boardroom; we'll find it in the classrooms of our local public schools.
Calling on America to do more than simply leave no child behind, Crew mandates that to thrive as a nation we need a national commitment to establishing standards of excellence and equity in all our public schools. He lays out what each of us must demand from our government, our school systems, our classrooms and our families in order to help our schools create a new generation of Americans able and willing to function in the workplace, at home, and as citizens of our nation.
With public schools as the anchors of a new community spirit, we can heal the divides of race, politics, and class, and recreate the shared sense of America that has bound this nation together.
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