Dr. Keith Eric Benson, is a Camden public school educator, qualitative researcher, and current President of the Camden Education Association (CEA). He is committed to defending urban public education and pushing back against financial interests and political operatives working to dismantle public schools in Camden neighborhoods. Dr. Benson is also a Camden resident, a husband and a father who is committed to his loved ones, friends and community.
He has taught in Camden’s public schools as a social studies teacher for fourteen years before being elected to the Presidency of the CEA. He has coached boys and girls basketball at both of Camden’s comprehensive high schools and is quite proud of the young men and women he’s had the opportunity of teaching and mentoring through basketball. In 2012, New Jersey’s state legislature hurriedly passed the Urban Hope Act which imposed the establishing of up to fifteen corporate-run charter schools within Camden’s nine square miles. And 2013, the State of New Jersey took over his school district and installed an uncertificated and unqualified superintendent to lead Camden’s schools; something Benson took as a clear indicator that the future of the city’s schools was in danger. Later that year, he began his doctoral studies at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and ever since, has dedicated countless research and activist hours to preserving a public city school system local politicians and out of state billionaires wish to see die… He is determined to use his research and platform to advocate for the improvement, growth, and sustaining of Camden’s public schools
Dr. Benson is also an author of Education Reform and Gentrification in the Age of #CamdenRising: Public Education and Urban Redevelopment in Camden, NJ (Peter Lang, 2018) and numerous articles on school choice, education reform, and urban education. He has served in the capacity of adjunct professor at Burlington County College and Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Since 2015, he has had the pleasure of presenting his research all over the country at annual academic conferences like that of the American Educational Research Association, Philosophy of Education Society, Urban Affairs Association, and University of Pennsylvania’s Ethnography Forum; and teacher union convenings such as the annual National Council of Urban Education Association and National Education Association conferences. In terms of presenting and exchanging information, nothing brings Dr. Benson more joy than presenting and building with his own community members.
His doctoral dissertation, Better for Whom? Present and Prospective Camden Resident Perspectives on State-Mandated Renaissance Charter Schools and Recent Camden Development is available online.
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