Last week, a long-simmering debate about which kinds of diversity—ideological, political, socioeconomic, racial, or ethnic—should matter most in our education reform community boiled over into public view.
This debate comes at an interesting time in my life because I am in the middle of a year-long leadership development program—50CAN’s Education Advocacy Fellowship—that was created to provide an on-ramp for more people to serve as education reform leaders. This experience has led me to realize something so simple it’s perhaps overlooked in all the back and forth over this debate:
There is more than enough work to go around.
It is exactly because of the scale and complexity of the challenges we face, and the numerous gaps left unfilled, that the best work in education advocacy is increasingly being carried out by coalitions that span the traditional divides.
That means intentionally elevating both ideologically diverse and racially and socioeconomically diverse leaders—because we all have something unique and different to contribute. Making room for a greater diversity of voices doesn’t have to mean asking anyone to step back from their work.
During my time in the 50CAN fellowship, I have come to learn from and respect the contributions made by conservatives who don’t look like me. They, in turn, have made time to listen to me and other emerging leaders with firsthand knowledge of the ways our education system has left poor kids and children of color behind. We both end up a little wiser because we are taking the time to truly listen to each other.
Where I come from
When I’m meeting people, I often make time to share why I feel so strongly about the need for change.
I come to this work in Arizona by way of Compton, California, where I grew up. My parents loved us very much, but they struggled to give us everything we needed. Life wasn’t easy. We didn’t have a lot of money, our neighborhood wasn’t safe, and the neighborhood schools we were zoned for were dropout factories.
My parents were only able to save up enough money to send one of us to a Jesuit high school. They chose me. My brother Ulysses had to stay behind in the public high school. Four years later, I became the first in our family to be accepted to college; meanwhile, my brother was entering the Los Angeles County jail. Four years after that, when I walked across the stage as a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, my brother was entering the penitentiary system for the second time.
Here’s what happened
My brother and I had the same parents and the same potential. We lived in the same house, and we shared the same Mexican heritage. But there was one thing we didn’t have in common: We did not have the same educational opportunity, because only one of us was able to attend a high school that worked.
I know that access to educational opportunity is what made our lives as different as they are. It’s a conclusion that left a scar on my heart. I went to college determined to become a lawyer so that I could fight for people like my brother as a public defender. But as I reflected on what happened to him, I came to the conclusion that as a public defender, I would reach him too late.
I decided instead to become the teacher he never had. The one who would understand him, who would take the time to connect with him; the one he would remember later in life, thinking, “If not for him, I would be in jail.”
The difficult truth is that my path diverged from my brother’s so dramatically because we ration high-quality education in our country. There just aren’t enough good schools to go around, and students from low-income families—like my brother—pay the price with their freedom. The research and statistics show us that this is true, but for me, the reality is much more stark; it’s reflected in the facts of my life.
I live with that difficult truth every day. It opened my eyes in such a way that they will never be closed again.
Most education reformers are committed to this work because we believe that you don’t need to ration good schools. It is our firm conviction that if we can muster the political will, it’s possible to create a system where everyone has the opportunity to get a good education regardless of their address.
It would therefore be ironic if, in our quest to achieve these ambitious educational goals, we slipped back into mistakenly believing that we need to ration leadership roles; that in order for progressive people of color to take a step forward, white conservatives need to take a step back.
I don’t believe that because it is the mindset of defeat. And defeat is the one thing we cannot accept. The price, paid in the broken dreams of kids like my brother, is simply too high.
What real leadership is about
Over the past year I have witnessed time and time again how the education reform community in Arizona has embraced a broader conception of leadership. It starts with leaders like Lisa Keegan, the former superintendent of public instruction and executive director of A for Arizona, and Tommy Espinoza, president and CEO of Raza Development Fund.
Lisa and Tommy have worked tirelessly to bring new voices into Arizona’s education reform community and open up more opportunities for new people to lead. They have sought out partnerships across political, racial, and ethnic boundaries and put the needs of kids above jockeying for the spotlight.
Most importantly, they have modeled what real leadership is all about: making the people around you more powerful rather than positioning yourself as gatekeepers to their success.
While I am still early in my journey as an education advocate, I am convinced of a simple proposition: The states that will truly transform their education systems will be the ones that adopt an outlook not of scarcity but of abundance—states led by education reformers who are constantly looking for ways to make room for as many people as are willing to commit their hearts to this cause.
This approach of addition, not subtraction, increasingly defines the Arizona education reform community of which I am proud to be a part. I believe that it points the way forward for an education advocacy movement strong enough, and diverse enough, to achieve our ambitious goals.
Martín Pérez is an Education Advocacy Fellow at 50CAN.
Editor's note: This essay was originally published in a slightly different form by Education Post.