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Racism, The Achievement Gap, and Public Education, Part 2

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This is the second of our series of articles that are offered to address the issues that face children of color and also white children who live in poverty in this the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world.

We begin with the simple idea that it is time to draw a line in the sand and say that we will no longer tolerate a world in which some Americans are denied access to the American dream. This demands that
we shift our focus to those things over which we have control and not squander our precious time and energy fretting about things that are outside the power of individual human beings to change.

It is like being stuck in the mud. Do we complain about our plight or start digging ourselves out.

We cannot, for example, go back and change several hundred years of history in which black men and women were brought to this continent in chains, nor the first 100 years following the Emancipation Proclamation during which black Americans were forced to live as second-class citizens, nor the 50 years since Civil Rights laws were passed; legislation that raised the expectations of African-American and other minorities but without altering the reality in which so many live in poverty, powerlessness, and hopelessness.

We cannot go back and change the reality that has greeted the millions of Latinos who have migrated to this country in recent years, whether legally or not.

We cannot legislate changes in the hearts of so many white Americans that are laced with bigotry and prejudice, whether blatant or subtle.

Neither can we legislate a change in the hearts and minds of those police officers who are predisposed to act with bias and excessive force. The best we can do demand that our communities hold abusers accountable and tighten our entrance requirements.

We cannot erase, through legislation action or executive orders, the economic disadvantages that have led generations of Americans to rear their children and live in poverty. Recall that President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty a half century ago and ask yourself if anything has changed. Most of us would say things have gotten steadily worse.

We have not been successful in our attempts to legislate an end to the institutional racism that has plagued and continues to plague black men, women, and children and the families of other minorities; institutional racism that is invisible to the overwhelming majority of white Americans. Civil rights laws have been on the books for a half century and have been routinely enforced and upheld by our nation’s courts of law, yet still these realities persist.

We cannot undo the damage that has been done to minds and egos of generations of children who have been victims of an educational process that has taught them how to fail nor can we undo a long history of academic failure that has led generations of young parents to relinquish their belief that an education is a ticket to the American dream and provides a way for their children to escape the clutches of poverty.

As much as we might wish to do all of the above they are not within our power and no amount of complaining about the injustice of these realities will alter that fact. The more we dwell on things we cannot change the more immersed we are in our paradigms of powerlessness and hopelessness.

We are not powerless, however, and we need not be hopeless. We have it within our power to draw a line of demarcation in the sand and say “no more!” All it requires is that we begin doing things differently from two strategic fronts, simultaneously.

We must alter, once and for all, the balance of power that drives legislation and policy making in the American political landscape. How we do this will be the topic of the next series of articles we will be writing but it begins with the reality that the conservative political power structure in the U.S. that, today, is driven by conservative “tea party” ideology, does not represent anywhere close to a majority of the American people. The problem, of course is that the majority of Americans have stopped participating in their own governance because they have given up hope that anything they do will make a difference.

In a recent post, Phyllis Bush, a great friend to public education, talked about choosing collaboration over competition. If the following groups of Americans would come together to form a political coalition they would have more than enough political clout to turn both our federal and state legislative branches upside down and also our federal and state executive branches.

Who would make up this coalition? The answer is all of the people whose political needs and interests are being ignored by those currently in power. They include:

• All African-American; Hispanic-American; and other ethnic, racial, and religious minorities; and also those who face discrimination due to sexual orientation;

• All professional educators working in public schools throughout America;

• All parents who depend on public schools for the education of their children; and,

• All of the men and women in America who work for a living and who are union members or who would belong to a union had that right not been taken from them.

We need to leave the tradition of Republican and Democrat behind. The reality, today, is that it is the Tea Party and their conservative supporters versus the people. Maybe we need to call it the “People’s Party,” making it clear, however, that this is not a socialist or communist agenda.

The other strategic front is American public education. We have the power to begin changing, from the inside out, the forces that keep poor and minority children from getting the education they need to break out of poverty. We can do this, however, only if we are willing to open our hearts and minds and re-examine our fundamental assumptions about the way we structure the educational process at work in American schools; about the way we teach children.

All that is required of us is that we be willing to step back and think systemically about the way the process is structured and how it produces outcomes that are so devastating to precious young lives.

If we do this honestly, and without feeling the need to excuse ourselves from blame or responsibility, it is so very easy to do. We should not waste one nanosecond worrying about blame or fault. What we can do—what we must do—is accept responsibility for doing things differently, beginning this very moment.

There is a simple but powerful axiom that we must keep at the forefront of our minds:

“It is not until we accept responsibility for the problems in our lives that we begin to acquire the power to solve them.”

Clearly the key is public education. If we are able to provide all children, not just affluent white children, the knowledge and skills they need in order to carve out full and productive lives for themselves then we can begin narrowing the performance gap until it disappears forever. We can begin by identifying outcomes that are acceptable to us and that will give all children an opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential. Then, it is simply a matter of structuring the process in such a way that it can and will produce those outcomes. We will show the reader exactly how this can be done in our last segment. Before we do so, however, there is one last point of discussion we must consider in the upcoming third post in this series.

The Achievement Gap is an Outcome the American Educational Process Is Structured to Produce! – Part 1

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This is the first of a four-part series of posts addressing the challenge of eliminating, once and for all, the performance gap that exists between African-American students, other minority students and their white classmates.

There was a great article written by Jamie Utt entitled “5 Things Well-Meaning White Educators Should Consider If They Really Want to Close the Achievement Gap” published at his website at www.changefromwithin.org.

Although all of the points in the article are on target, two sentences stand out to me.

The first:

“Let’s be honest: Public education was created to serve as an entry point for lower-to-middle-wealth White people into the American middle class (by preparing White students for success in industry and farming).”

And, the second:

“And simply put, when our schools have been set up to serve Whites while excluding all but a few people of Color, it makes sense that White people are far more likely to have an advanced education.”

The article goes on to present five things that we need to do. While all of them make perfect sense, and from a policy perspective should be at the forefront of our strategizing, none of them are things public school teachers can do for their students, irrespective of color, who arrived in their classrooms this morning, and every morning thereafter.

The article closed with the quote from legal scholar, Randall Robinson:

“No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow. Lines begun parallel and left alone, can never touch.”

I want to draw attention to eleven words from this quote, minus one. These words portray exactly what has been taking place in American classrooms, for as long as any of us can remember and these are the very things that keep blacks, other minorities, and poor whites from getting the kind of education that they need if they are to have any hope of competing equally and effectively in 21st Century American society. Those words are:

“. . . pit them without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged . . . .”

You will note that I purposely left off the word “victimizers” for reasons that I hope will become clear, shortly, to those of you who are reading these words. These remaining ten words describe the educational process at work in schools all over the U.S., public or private.

We spend an inordinate amount of our time and energy agonizing about things that we are powerless to change and then behave as if we are powerless to do anything until our government or some other greater power, usually undefined, has solved the big picture.

The truth, if only we will allow ourselves to believe, is that we are not powerless and we need not feel hopeless.

The hostile environment so eloquently described by Randall Robinson is an educational process in which African-American students and other disadvantaged children are pitted, not against Robinson’s “victimizers” but rather against children, reared by educated if not affluent parents, who arrive for their first day of school primed, prepared and motivated to be successful. The academic performance of disadvantaged children is then measured against the performance of classmates with whom successful competition is highly improbable.

The result is a glaring performance gap that is the inevitable outcome that the American educational process is structured to produce. It is an educational process the structure of which is very much subject to our will if only we will accept responsibility for its reinvention. This reinvention does not require an act of Congress or a state legislature. Every school corporation in America has the authority to restructure the process to produce the outcomes we so desperately need.

In the next segment of this series, before we focus in on things we have the power to do on our own, we will spend some time reviewing the long list of things we fret about, historically.

How Do We Subtract Failure from the Public Education Equation?

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Failure is a debilitating thing for anyone but it is particularly hard on children. Nevertheless, failure is key component of the traditional American educational process and the very fact that kids can fail leads to a reality in which far too many of them do. We need to ask ourselves, why is this necessary? Why should any child have to deal with failure?

Let us examine the definition of the word “fail.” Merriam Webster defines “fail” to mean “to end without success.”

For the purpose of public education, we can define “fail” as “unable to demonstrate mastery over given subject matter.” In our present educational process we have given the lesson; we have given students a fair opportunity to practice; and, finally, we assess their level of mastery by asking the student to demonstrate that mastery on a test. The grade the student earns and that goes into the gradebook is a reflection of their performance on that instrument of measurement. So far, so good.

The problem with the American educational process in an overwhelming number of public school classrooms is not that some kids did well on the test and other kids did poorly. Rather it is that, however the child performs, we declare our job done with respect to that particular lesson, lesson module, chapter, grading period, semester, or school year.

The question that needs to be posed is, “Why would we ever be satisfied with an unacceptable outcome for any of our students?”

These are children, after all. They are unique individuals—children of creation—and they each have equal value in the eyes of both the Creation and the law. Is there any reason in the world to compare them against their classmates and to declare that some are better or worse than others?

Is there any reason to believe that because students did not grasp a given lesson as quickly and easily as some of their classmates that they are incapable of learning? Yet, this is what happens in our classrooms. We finish one lesson and we move onto the next and each child is given a grade to reflect their level of mastery over the material at that point in time.

When we push kids along to a new lesson while they are still struggling to understand the old, they begin to view themselves as less capable than their classmates. This experience influences the way the child thinks of himself or herself and diminishes his or her self-esteem. When this happens over and over again, the effect is devastating. Is it any wonder that some of these kids reach a point at which they stop trying because they no longer believe that success is attainable? Is there ever a time when this could be considered an acceptable outcome?

If our job is to determine which children can learn the most in the fastest measure of time then the educational process in place today is perfectly structured.

If, however, our objective is to help every child learn as much he or she can as quickly as he or she is able then the educational process is working at cross purposes with our objective.

Each child deserves the time they need to experience that special moment when the material clicks in their mind and they understand. Only then should they be asked to move on to new material. Once a pattern of success begins to manifest itself in the child’s mind, everything changes. With each success it becomes easier to succeed on the next lesson.

Think about the difference this would make in the child’s self-perception.

When a child finds themselves at a point where they no longer see the sense in trying it is, indeed, a failure but it is a failure on the part of the educational process and not on the part of the child.

Our current educational process is structured to produce disparate outcomes and we will not be able to alter this reality until we change the way we teach and the context within which we teach. We need to re-invent the educational process until it is structured to produce the outcomes we seek: that all children learn as much as the can as fast as they are able.

My book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America offers a blue print for a structure that will produce such outcomes.

Racial Violence and Police Brutality Have a Similar Genesis!

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The rioting taking place in Baltimore over the past couple of days is not the first nor will it be the last incidence of young blacks, mostly men, acting out in anger in central cities throughout the U.S. Unlike those who engage in thoughtful protest, violence is all many of these young people know.

They are part of a growing population of young people, a large percentage of which are black, who are disconnected from mainstream society. They have been chewed up a spit out by a flawed educational process, have access to minimal health care, feel targeted by the criminal justice system, and feel imprisoned in their own communities. Do these factors justify such behavior? Certainly not, but we are not seeking justification.

What we are seeking, what we must seek, is understanding. Until we understand the forces that drive such behavior we can only react to it and reaction only prompts a chain reaction. We need understanding if we are to have any hope of a meaningful resolution.

That being said, is the rioting in the streets in Baltimore any different than a group of cops losing control and beating a black suspect in the streets? History is full of examples in which seemingly peaceful groups of people can, when conditions are ripe, morph into a violent mob to which they seem compelled to relinquish their self-control.

That human beings have a propensity to surrender to the mob is a given and it is a powerful force of human nature. What concerns us are the factors that trigger such behavior.

In the case of white cops and young black men in urban America, the dynamics that trigger such violence are remarkably and ironically similar. In both instances, the triggering emotion is a heightened sense of frustration born of powerlessness in the face of forces that affect their daily lives. Let us remind ourselves that the overwhelming majority of African-Americans do not engage in senseless rioting in the streets of any neighborhood, let alone their own, and the overwhelming majority of police officers do not engage in the senseless beating of suspects of any demographic.

Young people living in poverty, hopelessness, and powerlessness are reacting to a world that does not seem to care about them and from which they see no escape. While this group includes people of all races, creeds, and ethnic heritage, African-Americans are disproportionately represented and possess a unique sensitivity to discrimination. This burgeoning population of Americans live in a world that is separate and apart from what is perceived to be mainstream society and the chasm that separates them is widening, relentlessly.

When these young people take to the streets, it is almost always begins as a reaction to what they believe to be police brutality or other forms of institutional racism.

The police officers who respond with violence are reacting to their own sense of frustration over their inability—their sense of powerlessness—to bring perpetrators of a virtual avalanche of criminal activity to justice in an environment in which they believe the courts to be ineffectual. Imagine how any of us would feel about a job in which the problems that keep us from doing our job are overwhelming and where our employer seems incapable of doing anything about it. None of this excuses this type of behavior but it does help us understand.

The reality that we face as members of a democratic form of government is that the world is changing faster than ever and the tools we have at our disposal are becoming obsolete. No matter how much some people might wish it, we cannot turn back the clock to a time when the white man ruled the roost and values were simpler and clearer. This is true whether you are viewing the scenario as a conservative or liberal, republican or democrat, tea-party member or socialist.

The combination of conservative and liberal policies employed by our leadership over the last 65 years are what brought us to this point in history. These policies did not work then and they have even less chance of working in a world in which the gaps that separate us as a people seem impassable; where the population is growing steadily more diverse; and, in which our elected legislators seem incapable of working together.

There are tens of millions of young people who feel disconnected from mainstream society and the number grows, daily. Somehow we must find a way to pull them into the mainstream, not shut them off from it. We need new ideas, new solutions; we need to think exponentially.

These new approaches must begin in our public schools where public school teachers are presently under attack by educational reformers who do not understand the challenges of public education; who think that simplistic, jingoistic solutions can solve complex problems; and, who are oblivious to the damage they do!

We must call upon professional educators to acknowledge that the way we have been teaching kids for decades no longer works. We need them to come together as a profession and seek new educational processes that are focused on the meeting the real needs each and every child and to create the necessary structure to support that effort.

To paraphrase Zig Ziglar, “if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve been getting.”

The reader is invited to explore my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, where I offer a blueprint for action.

Relationship between teacher and student trumps everything!

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“I wish my teacher knew that I love her with all my heart!” was how one third grader in Colorado completed the assignment reported on ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir.

If we want all American school children to get the quality education they deserve, and that our society so desperately needs them to achieve, we must give them what they need to be successful. We can identify four things that are not only essential but they trump everything else. What we need our political leaders to come to understand, whether here in Indiana or anywhere throughout the U.S. is that standardized testing is not one of these four things.

The first thing children need is to be treated as individuals on a dedicated learning path that is tailored to their unique starting point. As every professional educator will attest, the level of preparation and motivation children bring with them on their very first day of school is as diverse as the population of parents who gave birth to them. Beginning with such a focus not only puts a child on a path on which they can be successful, it sends a subtle but powerful message that they are special and that they are valued. Nothing gives the child the absolute best opportunity to be successful and nothing helps a child develop a healthy self-esteem more than being accepted for who they are; not how they stack up to their classmates.

The second most critical component of educational success is that each child is placed in an environment in which they can enjoy a nurturing, positive, life-affirming relationship with a teacher who will love them and care for them unconditionally. We want every child to experience the joy of the special relationship that most of us recall when we think back on our favorite teacher. While this component might be second on our list, it is second only because of chronology. Creating an environment that fosters such caring relationships between teacher and child is, overwhelmingly, the most important thing we can do to assure that the child receives the highest quality education of which they are capable. Yes, I understand that some children are easier to love than others but the universal truth is that “the child who is hardest to love is the one who needs it the most.”

The third thing the child needs is the assurance that they will get off to a good start and this requires that they begin learning how to be successful, from the very outset. This can be accomplished by creating a situation in which a child is not permitted to fail. Because we have placed them on a unique learning curve, it does not matter how a given child compares to other members of his or her class. We need to create an environment in which each and every child is given the time they need to learn each and every lesson, every step along the way. We simply must not permit them to fail. One of the things our current educational process does most successfully is to teach children how to fail. If we can, instead, begin teaching them that they can and will succeed it is amazing how success replicates itself every step along the way. It changes the equation to one in which the child’s success is a given.

The fourth essential component is that we need to engage parents as partners in the education of their sons and daughters. If we can pull the parents into the special relationship we strive to create between a child and his or her teacher we create an environment in which anything is possible and where every obstacle can be overcome. A warm, nurturing, and positive triumvirate between parents, children, and their teachers creates the most powerful motivational force in the world.

Many public school teachers will read this list and nod their head that these are important but will then go back to what they have been doing, whether or not it has been successful. The problem is that these four components are so far from the reality from most public school classrooms, particularly those in our most challenging schools and communities, that they are viewed as unreal; as abstractions.

What every professional educator must be challenged to believe at the very core of their being is that these components are not abstractions. They are real, and they can be created in each and every public school classroom in America, if only we step back and examine not only the way we do everything and why, but also the way we structure the process that supports and facilitates what we do. Each of these components is achievable and manageable; they are attainable solutions to a human engineering problem that requires only that we structure the educational process to support our most critical objectives.

In my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge For Twenty-First Century America, I offer a blueprint for an educational process that relies on these components as a foundation for everything else it does.

I can imagine nothing that would validate a teacher’s existence more than hearing one their students say, “I wish my teacher knew that I love her with all my heart.”

We Need Fresh Ideas for a New Era of American History

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Both conservative republican and liberal democratic tenets of 20th Century America have gradually taken on the characteristics of dogma in that the underlying assumptions of their respective conventional wisdoms are rarely challenged or evaluated for their efficacy.

This is particularly concerning as we move into a new century where the problems we face as a nation, society, and world community are of an unprecedented breadth and scope. The unfortunate reality is that many of the challenges we face as members of an increasingly diverse people in an ever-more-complex new century are the consequence of the choices and policies of both republican and democratic leadership in the 20th Century. Those policies, choices, and ideologies will no longer take us where we need to go.

Most troubling is the emergence of the “tea party movement” that is striving to take us back to a time in America history that is perceived as better; a time when values seemed clearer. The problem, of course, is that the only people for whom that idyllic past was better were non- poor, white Americans. It was a time when white Americans represented the overwhelming majority and when they lived in a world in which they occupied a special place in society. This past is not recalled with the same reverence by black Americans and other minorities or by poor, white Americans.

Interestingly, this cherished past was a time in which blue-collar America, thanks to strong unions, enjoyed a level of economic success at least approaching that of “white collar” middle class Americans. The present day irony is that tea party and other conservative politicians and policy makers are doing their best to emasculate present-day unions as if they somehow pose a threat to the middle class. Why we would ever think that a strong working class able to earn levels of income to provide for their families, contribute to a vibrant economy, and pay their fair share of taxes is a bad thing is difficult to fathom.

The actions and policies of conservative politicians and policy makers seem to be driven by an equal resentment of the interests of African-Americans; other minorities; new immigrants, illegal or not; Muslim-Americans; gay and lesbians; and any other population of human beings who are perceived as different.

The unalterable fact is that African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and other groups as defined by race, color, creed, faith, or sexual preferences represent one of the two fastest growing segments of our population and will soon replace white Americans as the majority. The needs of these growing segments of the American population, simply stated, cannot be ignored or otherwise abused without placing our entire society at risk.

What conservative Americans do not seem to comprehend is that the more the interests of these “other” Americans are left unattended, the more likely they will be to rise up and begin exercising their right to vote. Given that these groups, in the aggregate, will represent a statistical majority, such an eventuality will bring the conservative agenda to an abrupt but judicious end. We can only hope that the traditional liberal agenda will also be laid to rest.

We have not even addressed the issues involving the other fastest growing population of Americans made up of baby-boomers who are joining the ranks of the retired; a group whose political clout will also mushroom.

The best hope for preserving our liberty and providing a safe and affluent future for our children and grandchildren is through leadership that embraces our diversity and engages all Americans in the quest for new and innovative solutions to the challenges of the 21st Century. At present, we are not even seeking new and innovative solutions, much to our great disadvantage.

In my novel, Light and Transient Causes, I show what could happen if we relax our vigilance and abdicate our responsibilities as citizens of a participatory democracy.

Indiana’s Republican Governor and Republican-controlled General Assembly have Lost Their Way!

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How ironic is it that both conservative and moderate republicans who have spent their lifetimes marching to the tune of small government and individual liberty, have so quickly put special interests ahead of the interests of Hoosier voters.

Recently, I suggested that republicans, under the influence of the tea party movement, have abandoned the interests of Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” in favor of a strategy designed to pursue their own agendas. Clearly, the well-being of Romney’s “47 percent” no longer matters to those in office; men and women who were elected to represent the interests of all Americans, or in this case, all Hoosiers, not just a select few.

Governor Pence’s overt efforts to undermine the role of Indiana’s elected Superintendent of Public Instruction just because she would not kowtow to his policy initiatives is but one example. Whether through administrative polices, the formation of the Center for Education and Career Innovation (CECI), Indiana House Bill 1638, or other miscellaneous shenanigans the Governor and his supporters have waged war against public education, public schools, public school teachers, not to mention public school families, children and their communities.

When he finally dissolved the CECI, ostensibly to eliminate “the friction at the highest levels of government” and “fix what is broken in education in Indiana” the Governor expressed pride in the accomplishment of the CECI. That the most notable accomplishments of the CECI were the creation of “friction at the highest levels of government” and aggravation of “what is broken in education in Indiana” is the apex of irony.

Make no mistake, there are many problems with public education here in Indiana and in states throughout the nation but these are the very things the Superintendent of Public Education, the DOE, and Hoosier educators were working hard to address. Those efforts were sabotaged by the Governor in order to pave way for solutions that were conceived while being shielded from public scrutiny.

The whole principle of accountability of elected officials such as the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and also the Governor, is that the voters have the power to boot them out of office if their performance is unacceptable. The actions of the Governor have been dedicated to the process of removing the responsibility for accountability of selected elected officials from the hands of the voters and place it in the hands of policy-makers whom he has appointed and who are not held accountable by the voters.

A generation ago it would have been considered inconceivable that such actions would be the strategy of choice of conservative republicans.

Unfortunately, the power of Indiana’s current and recent Governors has also been directed at Indiana unions and their memberships through the ironically entitled ”right to work legislation”; and, more recently against the Common Construction Wage Law that guarantees that Hoosier workers in the various construction trades will be paid wages that enable them to provide for their families and pay their fair share of taxes.

Now, the republican leadership in Indiana has turned its attention to passing “religious freedom legislation” that has brought ridicule to our state and that places certain members of our diverse citizenry at risk of discrimination. Should not every citizen be entitled to protection both when they “have been substantially” subjected to discriminatory acts or consider themselves “likely to be substantially” subjected?

In response to public outcry, our governor and state legislators scrambled, this past week, to pass a fix that would placate the opposition. Let the reader understand that this fix does not alter the underlying motivation of Governor Pence and others and it was only passed because republicans were “caught with their hands in the cookie jar.”

Where will it end? Unless the voters of the State of Indiana rise up and hold their elected officials accountable for their self-serving legislation and policy making the ominous chasm that exists between the rich and poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate, and between white citizens and their minority counterparts can only expand.

The saddest truth about this widening trend toward the disenfranchisement of so many of our citizens is that the people who are adversely affected by these actions could boot our elected officials out of office if only they would band together and exercise their right to vote.

Hoosiers are like all other Americans and must be challenged to recognize that the solutions to the problems of 21st Century America cannot be realized through the application of 20th Century thinking, whether conservative or liberal. These new and more complicated social challenges will demand new patterns of thought, fresh insights into the dynamics of 21st Century American society, and a new commitment to American imagination and ingenuity. What we require is exponential thinking of the highest order.

View Part 2 of my Interview on “The Verbal Edge” re: my book, The Difference is You: Power Through Positive Leadership

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View the second segment of my 2-part interview with Elizabeth Nulf MacDonald on her show, “The Verbal Edge” to talk about my book The Difference is You: Power Through Positive Leadership.

View Part 1 of my interview “The Verbal Edge” to talk my book The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leaders

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View the following excerpt from part 1 of the two-part segment of my interview with Elizabeth Nulf MacDonald on her show The Verbal Edge, to talk about my book The Difference Is You: Power Through Positive Leadership.

The Verbal Edge, The Difference is You: Power Through Positive Leadership, Part 1

If We Save Public Education in America, We Save America!!

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If Ever There Was a Time to Stand and Fight for Public Education, this is it!

If you have not seen today’s editorial in this morning’s Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (Monday, February 9, 2015) then pick up the paper now or click on this link. Invest in Schools

Indiana has several issues being debated at the state legislature and you can be sure the same debates are taking place in many other state legislatures.

Here in Indiana it is public school funding legislation in which the Governor and many of his supporters are pushing for more funding for charter schools and voucher programs without adequately addressing the needs of public school corporations throughout the state.

The Indiana governor and his supporters in the state legislature are also pushing a bill to make the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction an appointed rather than an elected position. Had the Superintendent of Public Instruction in the State of Indiana been someone appointed by either this or past governors rather than one elected by 1.3 million Hoosier voters, the department would have been nothing but a rubber stamp on an agenda that is not friendly to our states public schools, their students and communities.

The forces that are harming public education in Indiana and elsewhere are powerful beyond description and the only way to slow them down is for the parents of public school children to stand up and be counted. Write an email or letter to both the state representative and state senator in your area. Better yet, write and old fashion letter that takes up space and must be handled.

Sign a petition to support public schools, public school students, and public school teachers. Here is a link to a petition started by a 9th grade high school student taking a stand against the current emphasis on standardized competency testing. Reduce Standardized Testing in Public Schools Across America.

Seek out other petitions and opportunities to be heard by contacting such organizations as the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education or the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, and many others.

Start your own petition and invite other parents to sign.

Contact your local school corporation or the principal of your child’s school and ask how you can help.

Just do something to make your voice heard and your vote count.

Hoosier voters, just like so many American voters, have fallen in to the habit of thinking that just because we have voted for people to represent our interests in the state legislature they can be left to do their job, unattended. Keep in mind that, once elected, your representatives and senators are immediately besieged by special interest groups who may be pushing agendas that are counter to your interests and the interests of your local schools and communities.

Do whatever you can to make certain that your interests are not subverted by these special interest groups.

If every public school parent and their friends and families would stand up to be counted we could put a stop to some of these policies very quickly.

Finally, link up with your public school teachers through your PTA and through local teachers associations and find out how, working together, you can make a difference. Right now, many of your school’s teachers are feeling overwhelmed by the changes taking place and powerless to do something about it other than leave the profession. We cannot afford to lose any more teachers.

The most important message I urge you to accept is the idea that we are not powerless and we need not feel hopeless. All we have to do is engage people, in any way we can, even one person at a time, to join the crusade. If we save public education in America we save America.