If you are a progressive like me, you have to feel good about the gains we’re making. If you’re an urban educator, like me, not so much.

Progressivism has come a long way. I remember the times under President G. W. Bush for progressives.  It was a dark age for us. But we rebounded in a big way. President Obama came and we got our swagger back. Yes, we lost some key senate seats but Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are truly flexing that progressive muscle these days. They got college kids quoting them all day out here!

It’s all good. Except for one thing.

Mention Education Reform and watch the room instantly divide. It’s something like America was on the issue of slavery right before the civil war.

The Generals and Lieutenants in this civil war are sending their notes on the war to us, almost daily.

Jeff Bryant articles have been making their way into my news feeds a lot lately, mostly through Salon.com, but also through a crazy network of social media channels.

Diane Ravitch’s blogs and tweets are a constant. There seems to be a vast white network sharing both of them, so I’m never without my daily dose of anti-reform news. Reading them will have you thinking that reformers are the devil out here.

Now, I have no real disdain or dislike for either of these folks. I’d actually enjoy a face to face sit down with them. My question would be “what needs to happen to clear the divide between progressives on education?”

I’m no Ph.D. here. On paper, I don’t have the letters and years that each of these folks have. I’ll happily concede that. But here’s what I do have. I went to poor Black schools, in poor Black neighborhoods for my entire K-12 education life. I’ve been homeless in these systems. My parents knew nothing about navigating education. My neighborhood was and still is riddled with violence. I got consistently horrible teaching the entire time. I can vividly remember one of my friends in my 9th grade World History class being asked to read out loud when I learned he was a functioning illiterate 15-year-old that would eventually drop out of school.

I know Ms. Ravitch or Mr. Bryant would never ever have to experience sending their kid to THAT high school. My high school.  We buried him a few years ago. We’ve buried a lot of my friends. That’s the context I bring to the discussion with they talk on and on about testing and the rise of charter schools.

Here’s the thing, and this isn’t an attack on anyone, but, these folks didn’t have to grow up the way I did as a Black male in Hood, USA. They don’t look like me. They don’t speak like me. They don’t understand on a visceral level what’s at stake when WE can’t read or write. I didn’t love taking tests, but I should be able to read well enough to not be at the very bottom every time. Sure we gotta fix the cultural competency issues with testing but dammit, Black and Brown kids that grow up poor aren’t being taught how to read. Anyone that figures out how to fix that should be embraced, not fought. I don’t care if that comes from a traditional public school, a charter school (which are indeed public schools regardless of what folks may say) or a private school. We must read, by any means necessary.

Let’s not make this about winning an argument for argument’s sake. For me, it’s about winning the minds of poor Black children that have been criminally underserved for decades, centuries even. It’s about innovating and doing things differently. It’s about supporting schools that work and clearing out schools that don’t (traditional public, charter and private).

The sad thing about the progressive divide is that we know what works, but we’re too tangled up in special interests to deliver it for the poor. We know that our kids need more time on task and longer school days. We know that we have to expose kids to linked learning pathways. We know that we need folks that came up in these whack systems to become the leaders to help us rethink education. Let’s have that conversation.

Or we can continue the civil war, pretending that well-fed white “progressives” like Ravitch and Bryant somehow hold all the answers for the Black children they’ve never had. We can continue to be divided by politics, trying to make poor families feel bad when they go outside of our traditional systems. Because the ones that can leave are leaving. Black parents, when given a chance for something better, take it.

We don’t need a test to tell us that.

Dr. Charles Cole, III​ is an educator focused on the advancement of youth of color, but more specifically Black males. This passion comes from his experiences growing up without proper support, including being homeless and attending more than ten elementary schools across the country while his parents battled addiction and incarceration. Throughout that experience, no adult, no group, no organization ever asked him how he was achieving success nor how he was surviving. Schools were not a place where students in similar predicaments were learning. This experience helped lead to the publication of his first book, ​Beyond Grit and Resilience. As founder of ​Energy Convertors​, Charles comes from the community and has shared many of the students’ experiences. Previously Charles served as a social worker, a Director for Teach for America, the Vice Chair of the California Young Democrats, Black Caucus and at a director’s level with various youth-focused nonprofits. n addition to founding Energy Convertors, Charles is a national speaker and a writer, and he can be found in Oakland and around the country working with youth on how to equip themselves appropriately to lay the groundwork for a bright future. Charles is currently a board member of ​UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital​, and co-host of the ​8 Black Hands Podcast. Charles’ life goal is to better the communities he grew up in, which include Chicago, Paducah, KY, and Oakland.    

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