Jonathan Kozol on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., poverty and class size

Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. birthday, I try to honor this man’s great memory on this blog.  Today I watched Obama’s inauguration; he gave a great speech, particularly on issues like climate change, and probably the most progressive since he was elected; except for a gaping hole when it comes to education. 

During the last campaign, Obama spoke about cuts to public schools and the need to reduce rising class sizes; yet this wasn’t mentioned today.  All he said today about education was the vague need to “harness new ideas…to reform schools” and hire more “science and math teachers.”  

I suppose it could have been worse; he could have pushed Race to the Top and charters, but it is not wholly satisfying when we see how public education is being absolutely decimated by budget cuts, the over-emphasis on testing, the wholesale closing of neighborhood schools, the expansion of privatization, and online learning—with several of these negative trends actually encouraged by the policies of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.  How can a man as thoughtful as Obama support these policies? The cognitive dissonance his speech evoked in me today, as before, is extreme. 

So instead, I am posting the video below of a panel discussion, hosted by Tavis Smiley aired two days ago on CSPAN, in which Smiley and notable guests, including Jeffrey Sachs, Cornel West, Jonathan Kozol, Rep. Marcia Fudge, and many others discussed the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the continuing scourge of inequality and poverty in America. 

 [Spoiler alert:  Newt Gingrich recounts how he toured schools with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan, saying he would support 15 kids per class and more funding for education if only schools could be privatized through the expansion of vouchers and charter schools.]

The entire program is well worth watching, but especially from minute 27 on, when Jonathan Kozol speaks about the link between poverty and class size.   Here is an excerpt from his eloquent remarks:

 “I get so angry every year on Martin Luther King’s birthday when I hear politicians who turn their back totally on everything he lived and died for; never lifted a finger to bring an end to apartheid schooling….Doctor King did NOT say someday in canyons of our cities north or south we will have test-driven, anxiety-ridden, separate and unequal schools.  We’ve ripped apart his legacy and then we use his name in vain….

“The only tried and proven avenue of exit for the poorest children in this country from the destitution of their parents is to give them absolutely terrific, exciting and expensive public education, and to fund it not simply at the same high level as the richest levels of the suburbs but at a higher level because those children need it more….

In the past few years, class size has been soaring in our schools because they’ve been laying off teachers.  I walk into public schools in New York where I find 36 children in a 4th grade class, right back to the 1960's.  I walk into a high school in Los Angeles with 40 kids in a 10th grade social studies class...

“There are a lot of factors that go into terrific education, but one thing I know for sure is that the size of a class a teacher teaches is one of the most important factors in the entire pedagogic world.  I’ve heard plenty of old time conservatives – Pat Buchanan once yelled at me on TV and said, that’s nonsense, I had 50 in my class, it didn’t hurt me.  I said, well, I’m not sure. 

“But the fact of the matter, let’s be blunt about it.  I have rich friends, and these are people who read my book, and say to me, Jonathan, does class size really matter for those children?  And I always ask them where their kids go to school, and how many children in their classes, and typically if they’re in a lovely suburb its 16, 18.  Parents panic when it gets to 21.  And if they go to lovely private schools like Sidwell Friends here in Washington, it’s more like 15.  And then I see these kids packed into classrooms where there are more children than chairs. 

“If very small class size and the intimate, affectionate attention this enables a good teacher to give to every little girl and boy; if that’s good for the son of a prosperous physician or a successful lawyer or the daughter of a Senator, or the President himself, then it’s good for the poorest child in America.”

Amen.

Final results for our poll, do we live in an age of insanity or stupidity, and was that the right question?

Not long ago, we featured a poll on this blog, the idea for which originally came from a speech by Diane Ravitch.  We asked readers, "Do we live in an age of insanity or stupidity?" when it comes to education policy. 

Here are the results: 33% for insanity; 59% for stupidity; 6% for neither. 

But was this really the right question?

We live in an age when education policy is being made by non-educators like Bill Gates, who calls  for class size increases in our public schools, while the private schools his children attend have 15 to 17 students per class.  

We live in an age when Justin Snider, a writer for the Hechinger Post  (which receives funding from Gates) echoes this view, calling efforts to reduce class sizes in the public schools "foolish", while not revealing that the classes he teaches at Columbia University are capped at fifteen.

We live in an age when the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calls for teacher evaluation and pay to be tied to student test scores, while the Arlington VA schools that his children attend admit that they don't do this; neither does the private school that the Obama children attend, because, as a school administrator points out, "We don't believe [test scores] to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness."

No,  as Diane Ravitch has concluded, and I agree: we live in an age of hypocrisy and outright meanness, when it comes to those powerful men making policies for our public schools.

Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson on Democracy Now

Interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on June 30, we discuss NY State's admission of test score inflation over the past five years, and how the lack of progress in NYC schools reveals the failure of test-based accountability policies to improve schools, even as these policies are being forced on the country as a whole by the Obama administration.

For the full segment on this issue, including clips of the Obama's speech before the Urban League, see the Democracy Now website.

Our Children are more than test scores, Part 3: What Bloomberg, Duncan and Klein should learn from the Chinese

Today, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would order Joel Klein to tie all teacher tenure decisions to student test scores. Whether this violates state law and/or the union contract is a matter for others to determine.

What I can say is that his decision is the logical outgrowth of the rigid, unreliable and damaging accountability system that he and Klein have imposed on our schools, and that the Obama administration is now attempting to foist on the nation.

Check out Yong Zhao’s critique of the US Dept. of Education's “Race to the Top” program, and its attempt to force states to measure success and reward teachers on the basis of standardized test scores:

I have been reading through the 775-page final notice document to be published in the Federal Register on November 18, 2009. It includes the final versions of application guidelines, selection criteria and priorities for the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund (RTT), the largest education grant in U.S. history.

I can guess from news reports, op-ed pieces, and blog posts that many states are working hard to prepare their applications. From my reading of the criteria, I think the following are the winning strategies and actions to include in the application, although they may be inconsistent with research findings or common sense.

Suggestion #1: Stop paying teachers and principals a salary. Instead pay teachers and principals on a per standardized test point basis each day. At the end of each school day, students should be tested using a standardized test, what a teacher and principal is paid is calculated at the end of the day based on the growth of the student, i.e., how much has the student improved over the previous day. This is true accountability and will for sure keep teachers and principals on their toes! ….

Suggestion #2: Remove all “non-core” academic activities and courses and reduce all teaching to math and reading because what the Secretary wants is “increasing student achievement in (at a minimum) reading/language arts and mathematics, as reported by the NAEP and the assessments required under the ESEA” … Actually, no need to teach them these subjects, just teaching them how to pass the tests may be even more effective.

For his other (clearly ironic) suggestions, check out Over the Top: Winning Strategies for the Race to the Top Fund.

Zhao is a Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University, and his perspective is particularly interesting, as he was raised in China and once taught there. See what he says in another posting about what the Chinese government has learned from its top-down approach – and what America should learn from China's self-acknowledged mistakes:

China is determined to reform its education to cultivate a diversity of talents and creativity. China has recognized and suffered from the damaging effects of standardized testing and has been trying very hard to move away from standards. If America or any other nation wants to worry about China, it is its determination and focus on creativity and talents, not its test scores.

Once standardized test scores become an accepted way to judge the potential and value of a child, the performance of a teacher, and the quality of school, it is very difficult to change. We are already seeing signs of this in the U.S., thanks to all the education reformers who want to make Americans “globally competitive.”

Zhao is author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, and was recently on the Brian Lehrer show, Comparing Education in China to the U.S. Here is an excerpt from his book:

Clearly, American education has been moving toward authoritarianism, letting the government dictate what and how students should learn and what schools should teach. This movement has been fueled mostly through fear—fear of threats from the Soviets, the Germans, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, and the Indians. The public, as any animal under threat would, has sought and accepted the action of a protector—the government.

Let's hope that Americans reject this reflexive, damaging vision of education, and take a closer look at the potential consequences before we let our government turn our public schools into those like China's.

See also this Huffington Post column about how like China, South Korea is trying to move away from a system based solely on standardized test scores.

Arne Duncan has become an embarrassment

Check out my latest column on the Huffington Post.

Check out how Duncan's latest intrusion into local politics and slavish flattery of Mayor Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch's NY Post has provoked outrage from parents and teachers alike.

It would all be somewhat comical if this politicization of education reform weren't so inherently dangerous. It's time for Obama to rein his appointee in - before he causes yet further embarrassment to his administration.

This Land is Your Land

A moment to take pause and appreciate the history we are living through.

Here is the video from Sunday’s inaugural concert of Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen, performing the song that, in my opinion, should be our national anthem – “This Land is Your Land”.

The song was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940, towards the end of the Great Depression. The version on this occasion contained all its verses, including those rarely sung. They are below.

"In the squares of the city - By the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office - I saw my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wonderin
If this land's still made for you and me."

"There was a big high wall there - that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted - it said private property;
But on the other side - it didn't say nothing;
That side was made for you and me."

"Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking - that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me."

Let’s cross our fingers and hope that we all take strength from these ideas of self-empowerment, and that this historic moment marks a major positive transformation for our country -- and for our public schools.

Send a message to Obama about the need for smaller classes now!

Obama’s transition team has a website, with proposals for his administration to consider, suggested by members of the public. I just posted one about the need for class size reduction, along with funding to build more schools.

Please, go now and vote for smaller classes -- you can also leave a comment on the website. According to his transition team, "the top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.”

The first round of voting to determine the top three ideas in each category will end tomorrow, December 31 – so there isn’t much time! Why is this important?

Recently, there has been an unprecedented attack on class size reduction at the national level by policymakers, bloggers, business leaders and foundations, despite the fact that smaller classes are one of the few education reforms that have been proven to work, according to the research arm of the US Dept. of Education, and that also have widespread support among parents and educators.

In a recent report, Andrew Rotherham, an influential inside-the-beltway blogger, has proposed that school districts no longer be able to use their federal Title II education funds for this purpose – despite the fact that about half of all districts currently invest these funds in smaller classes. Instead, he wants to require that this critical funding be spent on more experimental and controversial programs, that are supposedly “high leverage” – like teacher performance pay and Teach for America.

In support of his opposition to class size reduction, he cites not a single research study (because none exists) but an oped published in the Daily News last year, written by Robert Gordon, a consultant employed by Joel Klein and another inside-the-beltway policy wonk, who trashed public school parents for their “class size obsession”.

Like Joel Klein and Jim Liebman, Gordon is an attorney with no experience as an educator or researcher. Yet both Rotherham and Gordon are being promoted by the charter school privatization and testing crowd to receive top-level appointments in an Obama administration.

Their attacks on class size have been joined in recent opeds by conservative commentator, David Brooks of the NY Times, who wrote that small classes were a “superficial” reform, compared to “merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards”, and Lou Gerstner, former head of IBM, who baldly stated in the Wall St. Journal that class size “does not matter” and is pushing for the abolition of all school districts (along with more merit pay and testing.)

The most powerful man in education circles today, Bill Gates, who intends to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the newest flavors of the week, including -- you guessed it -- more charter schools, testing, and merit pay, recently joined in on the chorus, attacking class size reduction in a prominent speech,

So vote for smaller classes here, if you would like Obama to consider supporting class size reduction and more school construction. Help him resist the loud but clueless voices of the DC education policy establishment.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/class_size_reduction_in_our_public_schools

Please forward this message to others who care, and Happy New Year.

Arne Duncan and the Chicago "turnaround" schools

In today’s Christian Science Monitor , an unusually skeptical article points out that Arne Duncan made his reputation on the so-called “turnaround schools” in Chicago – schools that were provided to private managers or charter school operators to restaff and restructure – but supposedly improved results dramatically, while keeping their original student body intact.

“The district closed, replaced, or overhauled the management at more than 60 low-performing schools. But … only a small percentage of students displaced by school closings ended up at the new and improved schools. Many landed at other schools that were on academic probation."

Obama made the announcement this week about Duncan’s appointment while standing in one such Chicago school, the Renaissance Dodge Academy that has been much praised by Obama and others for improvements in test scores. In fact, the principal was invited to testify before the House education Committee in May 2007, presumably because the school had the largest test gains of any school in Illinois in 2006.

See this 2007 letter that Julie Woestehoff of PURE sent to Rep. George Miller, chair of the House Education committee:

It’s important to know that the Dodge Renaissance Academy provides three instructors in every classroom, an expensive luxury made possible only by generous private funding that is not available to traditional schools. In addition, the Chicago Public Schools’ own data show that only 12 students who attended Dodge in 2002 (the year CPS closed the school) were still enrolled at the restructured Dodge in 2005.

The new school is essentially serving a completely different student body. It simply does not operate on a level playing field with other schools, and its results should be considered in that context. (emphasis added.)

AUSL (for Academy for Urban School Leadership) , which is the management group that took over the Dodge Renaissance Academy, subsequently took over another Chicago school and renamed it “Sherman School of Excellence”.

Sherman’s improved performance has been hyped in the same fashion as Dodge’s was previously. In general, this trend has prompted growing complaints from parents and students, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times, that many of these turnaround schools are "destroying'' neighborhood schools by luring away high-scoring kids, or flooding them all their low-performers.

According to a recent post by Julie, here is a summary of the stats at Sherman since AUSL took it over:

· The enrollment dropped from 617 in 2007 to 493 in 2008.

· The percent of low-income students dropped 10% in one year, from 94% in 2007 to 84.2% in 2008. (In 2005, the poverty rate was even higher, 98.5%.)

· The mobility rate rose from 43.5% in 2007 to 52.2% in 2008.

Her analysis echoes Eduwonkette’s who has argued (for example here and here) that the new NYC small schools have far different student bodies than the large, failing schools that they replaced – with fewer special ed, ELL and other high needs kids.

At the same time, the small schools offer smaller classes and more personal attention. Why should anyone be surprised that if you take higher-achieving kids, and put them in smaller classes, they will do better than high-needs kids in overcrowded classes?

Not to honk my own horn, but I made these points more than three years ago, in a brief report presented to the Panel on Educational Policy in November 2005, and later in testimony before the City Council.

Should Arne Duncan or Joel Klein be lauded for such accomplishments? Especially when Klein resists with every bone in his being from offering the same opportunities to students in the rest of our schools? What do you think?

Klein Out of Running as Ed Sec; Accepts Overseas Post

November 11, 2008 (GBN News): There has been a great deal of speculation over the possibility that President-elect Barack Obama may be considering NY City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for the post of Secretary of Education. However, GBN News has learned exclusively that Mr. Klein has instead opted to accept an equivalent position under President Emomali Rakhmon of Tajikistan.

According to sources close to the Chancellor, while the position of Education Secretary initially sounded appealing to him, Mr. Klein began to have reservations as he came to realize that the President-elect’s policies would constrain him from carrying out the sort of reforms that he has instituted in New York. The Chancellor was said to feel that his reforms could more likely be carried out on a national level under a leader such as Mr. Rakhmon, who is known for ruthlessly enforcing idiosyncratic decrees, and whose election was “widely dismissed as a farce”. Ironically, back in 2007 the Tajik strongman was tapped to swap positions with Chancellor Klein, but the move was derailed when riots swept Tajikistan in protest.

The Chancellor apparently began having second thoughts about the Cabinet position when he heard of Mr. Obama’s plan to close the US terrorist detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Klein has maintained similar facilities, popularly known as “rubber rooms”, in NY City, where teachers are held each school day, sometimes for years, without knowing the charges against them. The Chancellor had reportedly anticipated that as Education Secretary, he would have use of Guantanamo Bay as a sort of national “rubber room” to intern recalcitrant teachers. Not only would the Guantanamo closing be a major blow to the Chancellor’s plans, but it made him wonder if perhaps Mr. Obama’s other education policies might also be impediments to Mr. Klein’s concept of national education reform.

Mr. Klein was then said to have looked at Mr. Obama’s campaign website to read his ideas about education. What he found were statements like, “Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests,” and “Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.”

As the Chancellor read on, he became more and more convinced that Mr. Rakhmon’s policies, which like those of Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg include a ban on cell phones in schools, are far more compatible with his than Mr. Obama’s. And when Mr. Rakhmon assured him that, “We know how to deal with ‘entrenched interests’ like parents and teachers”; and “When we say ‘drill and kill’, they know we we really mean it”, Mr. Klein decided that Tajikistan was the place to truly make his mark on education reform.

Our letters to Obama about Joel Klein

Now that the New York Times blog has excerpted a few lines (and none of the substantive critique) from my letter about why President-elect Obama should not appoint Joel Klein as US Secretary of Education, I figure I ought to post the letter in full on our own blog.

On Friday, I was asked to elicit advice from NYC parents to Obama for The Nation magazine, which was supposedly working on an article about this issue. I thought this was a good opportunity to get some media attention to the disdain and horror that many NYC parents feel about the prospect of Joel Klein running the US Department of Education. Though I still haven't heard from the Nation, in the process I have received hundreds of passionate letters from parents and teachers who vehemently oppose this appointment, based upon Klein's sorry record here in NYC -- and one email from a parent who praised him.

I suppose I should also respond to the comments of David Cantor, the DOE spokesperson, who is quoted in the NY Times as follows:

The chancellor has spent the last six years building a school system focused on the needs of kids. Along the way he’s angered adults with entrenched interests in policies that have never worked. That’s a trade he’ll make every time.

I actually haven't noticed that this Chancellor has ever tried reducing class size or addressing the other needs of NYC children to receive a decent, well-rounded education but instead has lurched from one faddish theory to another in his attempt to make it look like he is improving our schools. When he's been unsuccessful at accomplishing this goal, he has tried to manipulate the statistics to prove otherwise. But it is true that he has angered adults -- teachers and parents alike-- who have a real interest in trying to ensure that our schools provide a real opportunity to learn.

Anyway, my letter follows -- please everyone, add your own recommendations to Obama in the comments section!
___

The Department of Education under Joel Klein has been run like a ruthless dictatorship – with no input from parents or educators, and no thought of how the policies he has imposed on our schools have been destructive to our children and their futures.

He has consistently ignored the crisis of overcrowding in our schools, that in many neighborhoods has gotten worse because of rampant residential development, as well as a result of his insistence to insert hundreds of new charter schools and small schools into existing, overcrowded school buildings. In a recent survey, half of all principals say that the overcrowding creates unsafe conditions for students or staff, 29% said that lunch starts at 10:30 AM or earlier, 25% said that they have lost their art or music rooms in recent years, and 18% said they had classrooms with no windows. Thousands of children are being given special services in hallways or in closets.

He has put almost no effort in building new schools, and under this administration, twice as many new seats have been created in new stadiums than schools. The city’s investment in school construction as a percent of its total capital spending is at an historic low, and will drop even more precipitously in the future, if the DOE’s proposed school capital plan goes through.

Joel Klein has refused to reduce class size, despite repeated audits and reports from the State Comptroller’s office and the State Education Department showing how under his administration, hundreds of millions of state dollars meant to provide smaller classes to NYC students have been misused. As a result, 86% of NYC principals in a recent survey have said they are unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes.

Similarly, he has argued that even under Mayoral control, the Department of Education is not subject to city law, and thus he continues to defy laws passed by the City Council over the Mayor’s veto, requiring him to take measures against bias crimes and bullying in schools, to allow students to bring cell phones to school, and to obey the recycling laws required of every household and business in NYC.

The Chancellor has moved to eliminate the authority of school leadership teams –made up of half parents, half staff – to have decision-making authority over school budgets, contrary to the state law that created these teams. He has continued to shut out parents from having any input whatsoever, at the school, district, or citywide level.

He has spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on no-bid contracts, and rather than decreasing the bureaucracy, the number of highly paid bureaucrats at Tweed continues to grow --- most of whom have no background in education. To counter a recent article by a Daily News reporter pointing out the personal wealth of many of the top education officials, who are former business executives and corporate consultants, the DOE press office responded in defense that two out of twenty of Klein’s top advisers were long-term educators. (This article was killed in the middle of the night, and removed from the Daily News website after complaints from the DOE; but we posted a copy of it on our blog here.)

The only educational philosophy of those running the system is based on trying to improve standardized test results, no matter how much cheating and test prep that involves. Whatever the rise in state test scores that has resulted is not matched by improvements in the more reliable national assessments called the NAEPs. In fact, NYC was 11^th out of 12 urban school districts in terms of its gains in the NAEPs over the course of this administration, and there has been no closing of the achievement gap in any subject tested.

Indeed, Joel Klein’s insistence on basing all decisions on high-stakes tests has led to racial disparities growing in many areas – with far fewer children of color admitted to gifted programs and to our selective high schools, and a declining number of Black and Hispanic teachers in our teaching force.

In short, he has been a disaster for our schools, and Barack Obama should be forewarned not to name him to any position of authority in his administration – as much as we would like to get rid of him!

Diane on the debate

Diane Ravitch on last night's Presidential debate – from Politico.com.:

On the issue with which I am best informed--education--I thought that Senator McCain was pathetic. He claimed that vouchers were the answer to our nation's school problems, but the evidence does not support him, nor do practical politics. There are only three cities in the United States with public voucher programs--D.C., Cleveland, and Milwaukee. The results to date do not bear out Senator McCain's optimistic appraisal. Since vouchers are in fact not only unavailable but unconstitutional in most of the country, this is a false promise on the part of the candidate.

Senator Obama was right, in my estimation, in supporting a strengthening of early childhood education, but I was surprised to see his enthusiastic endorsement of charter schools and pay-for-performance. The evidence on both these initiatives is just as weak as for vouchers.

Neither candidate showed a deep understanding of the needs of our public schools.

Earlier, Diane had been asked by the NY Times what question she would ask of them – unfortunately, Bob Schaeffer did not take her advice.

A NYC parent and advocate for children with disabilities writes in response to Gov. Palin's remarks about Obama

The following letter was written by Maria T. Garcia, President of Parents of Blind Children of New York:

In response to Governor Palin's recent remarks about Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer;

For some time now I have felt that the only type of service that is regarded by many in our nation as truly valuable is service in our military. I think this is tied into our collective definition of heroism and strength. Governor Palin’s recent remarks dismissing Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer seemed to perpetuate that perspective.

As a community organizer, an advocate for children with disabilities, their parents, families and educators, and as a parent of a child with disabilities I understand that standing in defense of one’s country happens in many places and in many ways. It is found in the fight to preserve public education and public libraries and our public spaces. It is found in the battle against the erosion of our civil liberties and against those who support censorship and seek to ban books. It is found in community organizers battling racial and gender discrimination and in the struggle for fair wages, affordable housing and in the fight to reform our health care system. It is found in the movement for peace and in standing in opposition to war and occupation and to bringing our troops home. It is also found in the ongoing battle to prevent discrimination against the disabled.

In her address at the Republican National Convention, Governor Palin promised parents of children who have special needs that they would “have a friend and advocate in the White House. “ I believe that was a well meant sentiment, but Sarah Palin like every other brand new mother of a child with special needs is taking the first steps on a road she can’t possibly imagine. As the mother of a four month old infant with Down syndrome, Sarah Palin will learn by hard experience what her son needs and more importantly what she needs to be as the mother of a child with disabilities. In time she will learn what navigating the system really means when you have a child with special needs. I expect that she will have the fortitude to fight the system and be the warrior advocate that the parent of a child with disabilities needs to be. I pray that she will stand up to negative societal attitudes and demand high expectations of her child. I hope that she will have the courage to face her own and her family’s deepest fears about disability and that she work to make effective personal change and project that change into her own community. Very soon Governor Palin will know that her staunchest allies in this gut wrenching battle are the veteran parents with years of service on the front lines and she may even look up in surprise to see just who is standing by her side.

Then and only then will Governor Palin understand that what her child and every other child with disabilities needs is not a friend in the White House but rather a community of friends at his side that will stand up every day in a hundred ways and demand that society see him and every child like him as a whole person. Because change does not start at the top and gravitate down but is driven up from the bottom by people that are looked through, and from those within the community who give them a voice. Through that voice the people who are overlooked are elevated. That is the voice of the community organizer. The proud Americans who choose to serve in our disenfranchised communities to provide that voice to families facing seemingly insurmountable barriers to success are our nation’s unsung heroes and they should never be dismissed.

.