Let Us Make This A Time To Be Thankful For

Today I am thankful for the progress we've made, as a society, as a nation, as a people, and as a family. I am also thankful for the progress I've made in my own life. Thanks to the love and support of so many throughout the years I am now able to do things I would have never dreamed possible during my childhood days in Oakland and San Jose. And, though I know the road is long and many challenges lay ahead, I am reminded by my ancestors of just how far we have come. Onward, forward, together my friends. I am thankful for the time, for life, for a cause, and most of all, for all of you. Together, let us make this a season to be truly thankful for. After all, we are the change that we've been waiting for.

Hope

Here is a post from the post-election euphoria of November 2008. One year later I look back upon what I wrote then and I stand by these words now more than ever.

November 11, 2008

Last Tuesday, November 4, 2008 I stood along with 100 strangers at the offices of the Democratic Club of Camarillo and cried as I heard the acceptance speech of president-elect Barack Obama. I thought about my great grandmother and my grandmothers and what they would make of this moment. I thought of my father and his stories of attending segregated schools in the south during the 1950s. I thought of all that I have seen and heard in my 37 years that would allow me to become cynical and think that moments like this one would never arrive. And then I looked into the eyes of those around me and the 75,000 people sitting in Grant Park in Chicago and the billions around the world who stayed up through the middle of the night or awakened early in the morning to share in the moment. And the one word, the once idea or concept that emerged for me was hope. Its an important life defining concept for me; I end all of my books with the word hope, because I know that our humanity is ultimately tied to our willingness and our ability to hope.

But I also know that sometimes it is difficult to hold onto hope during dark times, when hope seems more like foolishness. When the cool people, the intellectuals, or those in power tell us to stop hoping and to start lowering our expectations for our lives and our worlds. And in my own dark moments I fall victim to this way of thinking. But standing in that office alongside people who have given so much time and energy to a cause that they believe in and thinking about my students at UCLA who have been so active and so energized, thinking about my own children and their chants from the bedroom I realized that it was time to permanently expunge the cynic, time to be openly and unabashedly hopeful. And so last Wednesday felt easy still high on life and the fumes of election night mania. One week later, though, I still feel it. I’m not ready to give it up. And maybe that does sound foolish, but I’d rather be a fool than an intelligent pessimist.

And what is so wrong with thinking that a small group of committed people can actually change the world? What is so wrong with thinking that maybe, in a small way, we already have?

Invest in Schools and Students, not Standards

This is a version of an editorial I wrote for the New York Times in September. Basically we were asked to respond to the recently released draft of the National Governor's Associations Common Core Standards.

I agree with much of what is currently contained in the document. We do need students who are able to critically interrogate texts. We do need students who are able to address a research question and collect credible data. We need students who are able to use technology as a tool to distribute valuable information to authentic audiences.

My problem is that the real problem in education has very little to do with the absence of national

standards. Without investing in educational resources how can we effectively evaluate educational outcomes? If we are sending students to schools (and we are) that lack adequate resources such as books, computers, credentialed teachers, and modest class sizes, how can we hold the students responsible for whether they learn?

Far too often the schools that lack adequate resources are located in rural and inner city communities and they serve our most disenfranchised populations. The groups most targeted by standards (and it is thinly veiled) are also the groups in my state who receive the fewest educational resources. If I wanted someone to climb a mountain, but I didn’t provide him or her with the tools or the training, I should expect failure. Now if I were to provide all of the tools and training, I could legitimately expect a higher degree of success. The difference is not in talent, but in preparation.

I would rather focus on the material and human resources needed to create effective schools. In Los Angeles County, for example, English classes have as many as 40 students! It would be far more beneficial to cut class sizes than to introduce new standards. You cannot simultaneously disinvest in education and expect it to get better; things just don’t work that way.

I would like to see a genuine investment in education as our national priority. I applaud Congress for allocating $100 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the improvement of our educational infrastructure. Much of this money, however, will merely offset the estimated $80 billion in cuts in education spending at the state and district levels because of the economic downturn. The amount is substantial until we place it in the context of the $700 dollar stimulus or the $900 billion contemplated in health care plans in Congress.

We need to transform literacy instruction. But we will not achieve our goals if we raise standards without raising our investment in our students, our teachers and our schools.