A devotion to his students motivates teacher
of the year
Washington, D.C., educator credited with raising achievement

Jason Kamras, the 2005 National Teacher of the Year, is convinced of one thing: Limited access to well-funded, high-quality schools for economically disadvantaged students is the greatest social injustice facing America today.

Speaking at the closing session of the AFT QuEST (Quality Educational Standards in Teaching) conference, on July 10, in Washington, D.C., Kamras described the challenges that face poor children, noting that these students are seven times less likely to get a college degree (compared with their more-advantaged peers) and are more likely to live in poverty all their lives.

“We simply cannot allow this to continue,” he said. “We weaken our democracy and the future of our nation.” He was particularly critical of a system and a society that writes off these children as “unprepared, unequal and undeserving,” insisting that students “should only be constrained by their imagination, not their zip codes.”

Kamras outlined fundamental principles he considers essential to tackle the problems of educational inequity. These include maintaining an “unwavering belief” that kids can achieve at the highest levels, embracing accountability for students and schools, supporting visionary school leadership, and working for decent healthcare and housing for every child. Among the most important, he declared, is redoubling efforts to strengthen the teaching profession. “Great teachers can wrestle through all the obstacles to reach their children.”

Through his commitment to his students at John Philip Sousa Middle School in Washington, D.C., the AFT member and math teacher has done his part to chip away at this inequity. Noting that his school played a historic role in the civil rights movement (Bolling v. Sharpe, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case that paved the way for the desegregation of all District of Columbia public schools, arose from a challenge to segregation at Sousa), Kamras said he felt his school had a special mission to be an “agent of social change.”

A member of the Washington Teachers Union, Kamras holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a master’s from Harvard. He has been credited with reshaping his school’s math program to raise the math achievement level among students. Currently in his eighth year at Sousa, Kamras is also co-founder of an extracurricular program that seeks to expose students to the rich cultural and historical resources in the Washington, D.C., area.
The National Teacher of the Year program is a project of the Council of Chief State School Officers. Kamras is the 55th recipient of the award and the first teacher to represent the District of Columbia.