We must do the right thing. And in the world of California’s crumbling education system, the right thing is reform. The right thing means putting politics and self-interest aside. It means putting California’s children first. It means acknowledgment of our mistakes, our failures. And it means the embrace of new strategies, including giving parents more choice in where they send their children to school, in tracking student performance and using data to evaluate teachers and principals.
Today I stood at a Sacramento middle school with Gov. Schwarzenegger and other education reformers and spoke about the need for California political leaders to make sure the state competes for $700 million in President Obama’s $4.3 billion Race to the Top program.
The money is an inducement, but shouldn’t be our guiding light. We must reform our education system because at the current pace, far too many of our children are being pushed to the margins.
Two decades before I ran for Mayor, I decided to devote energy to making sure our inner-city children had world-class education opportunities. My motivation came from my own experiences growing up in Oak Park.
I was bused to a middle school in an upscale neighborhood. I received a decent education (though in college I learned it wasn’t nearly as decent as the education enjoyed by many of my classmates at UC Berkeley).
I also learned that some children who stayed behind in Oak Park were all but abandoned by the system.
As Mayor, I have no direct control over schools. But I will never stop speaking out for reform, because I know it’s impossible to have a great city without great schools.
Race to the Top is a fresh start, an opportunity for California to reverse a trend of cutbacks and priority decisions that turned hundreds of thousands of children into after-thoughts.
Let’s move California forward and make our schools great again.