| Stan Salett | |
| Birth Date: | 6 April 1936 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Civil rights activist & national education policy advisor |
| Known For: | Creator of the Upward Bound Program |
| Spouse: | Elizabeth |
| Children: | 2 incl. Peter Salett |
Stan Salett (born April 6, 1936) is a civil rights organizer, national education policy advisor and creator of the Upward Bound Program and helped to initiate Head Start.[1] [2] [3] In the early 1960s Salett was an organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[4] He was the first director of education of the Office of Economic Opportunity, where the Head Start program was created. He co-founded the National Committee for Citizens in Education, dedicated to promoting parent and citizen involvement in schools. During President Lyndon Johnson administration he initiated the National Upward Bound program.[5] [6] [7] [8] While working in Washington, D.C. he served on the staff of all three Kennedy brothers: President Kennedy's Committee on Youth Employment, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency and Senator Ted Kennedy's Presidential campaign in 1980.[9] He was an active school board member in Maryland in the 1980s.[10] During President Bill Clinton's transition he vetted candidates for Attorney General and Secretary of the Interior.[11]
In 2011 he published his memoir, The Edge of Politics: Stories from the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty & the Challenges of School Reform.[12] He received the New England Education Opportunity Association's Claiborne Pell Award in 2013.[13] [14] Presently he is President of the Foundation for the Future of Youth, a division of the Eigen Arnett Educational and Cultural Foundation. He has developed special search engines to meet a variety of human needs such as the elimination of human trafficking, the improvement of school performance and the scarcity of the global water supply.[15] In 2016 Salett has been involved in The Independent Media Institute study which evaluated the movement to privatize public education. It was revealed that, "… in the past two decades, a small group of billionaires – including News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch, who once called public schools an "untapped 500-billion-dollar sector" – have worked to assert private control over public education ...."[16] [17] Salett was presented with the 2017 Distinguished Graduate Award from Boston Latin School for his career to public service and public policy work.[18] The Award is given each year to alumni exemplifying the Boston Latin School motto, sumus primi.[19]
, he resides in Washington, DC, and Chestertown, Maryland with his wife Elizabeth. He has two sons, singer-songwriters Peter Salett and Steve Salett, owner of Saltlands Studio in Brooklyn, New York and Reservoir in Manhattan.