Defying the gravitational pull of education politics

When my daughter was about 6 months old, I discovered a little trick to make her laugh. If I tossed her in the air just a few inches, she got adorably happy. As she ascended, she grinned from ear to ear. Then, there was a moment when she felt the transition from rise to fall. She instantly panicked. Suddenly, I caught her from the sky. She let out a hearty giggle, knowing that she was safe in my arms. She knew, in her own way, that she had just done the impossible: She had just defied gravity.

I tell this story because the ubiquity of gravity’s pull can help us better understand the severity of what’s happening right now with public education. Essentially, a massive geophysical force constantly pulls our poor and/or Black and brown students to the bottom. It’s so omnipresent that they feel the tugs on their legs as soon as their educational journeys begin — arguably before. Those of us who are policy enthusiasts tend to see this gravitational pull as a product of bad policy, but I argue that the force is made up more of the politics surrounding public education. The explicit political organizing around the maintenance of racial and class advantages has been acting like quicksand to our children. The biggest threat to an equitable and prosperous American society is not a particular educational policy, but these orbiting politics — what I am calling the gravitational pull.

I want to make it clear from the start that policy matters. After all, this is a column about policy solutions. Throughout our journey together, we’ll be learning more about new evidence-based policy reforms, models, and interventions that school districts and states can adopt to better support K-12 students, particularly our most vulnerable ones. But I start with politics at the forefront because our ability to steer a sailing ship rests on our command of the tides of the sea.