Yesterday Ethan and I had one of our talks with about 85 students who were in DC on a CloseUp program. Instead of our usual spiel, in which we talk to students about the critical need for students to have a voice in the issue (punctuated by an incredible story we tell where a US Congressional aide actually responded to our assertion that youth must play a critical role as partners in school reform by snipping, "eh, but what are kids gonna say?"), we decided to break the students into smaller groups and ask them how they would suggest improving our American education system.

The solutions we offered included:
- Strengthen the No Child Left Behind Act
- Provide School Choice to all Students through Publicly Funded Vouchers
- Repeal the No Child Left Behind Act
- Pass an Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing all children the right to high quality public education
- Design your own

So what did the group say? Of the 8 groups, two suggested we strengthen the No Child Left Behind Act by fully funding the law and pushing for stronger state (or even national) standards. Two other groups designed their own strategies, focusing instead on teacher pay and recruiting high quality teachers into our classrooms. And four groups (without our prompting, we promise!) suggested that education ought to be a right guaranteed to all children as a fundamental American right.

To be sure, the menu of options we presented the students was very broad and there wasn't much time to get into the nitty gritty details - which make a world of difference. But this much was clear about what these students from Alaska, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin, New York, and other states had to say: major change is needed in our schools, and no one knows this better than the young people themselves who stand to suffer if we fail to commit to the tough policies and resources necessary to make quality educational opportunity available to all our children.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here's a standing offer for any student who runs a petition drive in their school and gets more than 75% of their student body to sign their support for an American right to quality public education: if you make it to DC, Ethan and I will take you out to dinner!

We were lucky enough to meet Emily Rose, who you might remember from her guest blogs about the petition drive she ran in Painesville, Ohio last March. As high school seniors, Emily and her friend were in town during their spring break to see the city and visit colleges, and they made the time to meet with Ethan and I for dinner.

What did we learn from our evening with Emily and Lindsay? Well, first of all, high school students have so much energy. I don't know when it happened, but we got a little bit old sometime between our own senior prom and the start of our lives as adults. But their energy was encouraging, especially after a less-than-stellar outing by the two of us at our recent talk with CloseUp students earlier in the week, when we couldn't seem to inspire that many of the students to action. That's the way social change goes, though, I suppose - it giveth and it taketh away.

So the offer stands: to all of you students out there who are excited about the cause of a national youth movement for better schools, start a club of Our Education students to run a petition drive. And then make it down to DC, give us a call, and we'll grab Five Guys together!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking for something to do? Make friends with Our Education on MySpace!

We're very new to the Myspace world, so if you have ideas about how to pimp out our page, make things cooler and more interactive, or just want to post a comment to say hi, be sure to post a comment on our wall. You can also email me at aaron@oured.org with any tips. Ahh, the fun parts of our job!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you may know, the US Supreme Court declared in the 1973 San Antonio v. Rodriguez Case that education is not a fundamental, American right. 33 years later, in response to this ruling, a blue-ribbon group of legal scholars, practitioners, community organizers, and education advocates is meeting at a symposium organized by Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley's law school) on April 27-28 to discuss legal, organizing, and political strategies to ensure quality public education as a right of all our children.

I was asked to submit an entry to a Rethinking Rodriguez Blog that the symposium has launched to build conversation up prior to the symposium, and here is what I submitted:

My name is Aaron Tang, I’m the co-director of a new national nonprofit organization called Our Education, which is working to build a national youth movement of high school and college aged students for an American right to high quality public education. As a 22-year-old who just graduated from college last May, I have neither a legal nor policy background. But my hope is to bring to the symposium something amounting to a student voice—what young people themselves have to say about why the fight for a fundamental right to quality education is so critical.

It is our belief that creating a fundamental right to education in this country would affect young people in four important ways. First, it would force us to define, through the legal and legislative processes, what we as a nation actually believe quality education ought to mean for all American youth. Second, it would change the power dynamic that currently operates in our schools, where states and the federal government hold districts, schools, educators, and youth “accountable” for their performance but no one holds the states and federal government accountable for providing the tough policies and resources necessary for high achievement. Third, the creation of a fundamental right to education, especially if it is enshrined explicitly in the US Constitution, would serve as a statement of priority that has been too long missing in our social & civic environment. Finally, if the fundamental right is pursued through a democratic process that involves millions of Americans (particularly the youth who are most directly affected), the most important effect may be that the process itself will produce a generation of youth believes deeply in the importance of educational opportunity, civic responsibility, and civil rights.

The problems facing youth in their schools today are not educational in their nature (which is to say, we do know what good schools look like and how to provide them); they are political. It is a shortage of public demand and political will for change that is responsible for our paradoxical position today: we are among the world’s leaders when it comes to guaranteeing human and civil rights, yet the most important right of all—the right to an education—is not among them. If this is ever to change, public opinion and the power of millions of ordinary American citizens will have to be marshaled in support of a fundamental right to education.

I encourage you to check out Our Education Blog if you are interested in reading more about the student voice and why it must play a critical role in Rethinking Rodriguez.

Posted by Aaron Tang at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No matter how hard any of us work at whatever it is we do--as a student, teacher, non-profit director, or elected official--some days will be better than others.
We've had our fair share of tough days over the past several months (I'll be sure to blog about a tough day the next time it happens), but today was one of the better ones, mostly because of a meeting we had this afternoon with a recent college grad who now works with the Close Up foundation as a Washington, DC Program Coordinator.

For those of you who aren't familiar with CloseUp, they're one of the nation's premier organizations when it comes to teaching young people about our democracy, civic engagement, and political involvement in a first-hand way. High school juniors and seniors who participate in CloseUp's signature Washington DC program come to the city for an entire week and meet with elected officials, congressional staff, advocacy groups, lobbyists, and other people who work within the beltway (not to mention hundreds of other active high school youth from around the country). A friend of mine from Oakland, CA apparently enjoyed the experience so much that he went on to do a total of four CloseUp programs during his high school years.

One of the events that CloseUp students participate in during their time in DC is called the "community on-site," where students meet with advocacy and organizing groups to learn about the work that they do and how they can get involved when they get back to their home states. If you think this sounds like a match made in heaven for Our Education, you're right... and maybe we should hire you as our operations director. We talked with our friend from CloseUp for more than a half hour, and agreed that it would be a great fit for both our organizations to do as many CloseUp community on-sites with Our Education as possible--as many as two or more per week--over the next weeks! Our first one, to a group of probably eighty students from across the country, will be on Monday afternoon - and we are very excited. So if you're a high school student who wants to learn more about Our Education now you can come visit us in DC with a CloseUp program too!

Posted by Aaron Tang at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the cardinal rules for any young organization is to get publicity for its efforts. Without press, your organization's message and goals might be nothing more than "a wee orphan of truth, wandering the streets in search of a home" (to quote the Geico gecko). Well our wee little orphan found a home today in Palo Alto. This morning an article about our national petition campaign ran in the Stanford Daily. Though the month is only three days old you can already chalk one up for Our Education.

In keeping with the scoring theme (which seems to be the theme of the day on this blog, which is perhaps fitting given that it's Major League Baseball's Opening Day): Aaron scored a decisive victory (3-1) in the number of times quoted: scoring in the 2nd, 8th, and 17th innings (paragraphs).

Not to mix metaphors...oh, what the hell: Maybe my contribution to this article is good enough to get me nominated for best supporting actor. I can be like Judi Dench who won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth I for six whole minutes(!) in Shakespeare in Love. With pithy lines like “Students are the primary stakeholders in education, but government representatives often don’t see them as constituents,” how could I not?

Posted by Ethan at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier this week, Maryland became the first state to take overpublic schools under the auspice of the No Child Left Behind Act. The State Board of Education voted to take over four chronically failing Baltimore City high schools, and strip away the city's direct operations over seven additional middle schools.
Other writers have already hit on some of the fundamental issues that this development raises, but let us get on the record and raise an important question...

What happens if the schools don't get any better after Maryland's State Board of Education tries to work its magic?

In principal, it's certainly a good thing that the No Child Left Behind emphasizes the importance of results, since talk means little if minority, low-income, and "geographical disadvantaged" children continue to suffer from a sharp achievement gap. And if any company saw that an employee or contractor failed to fulfill its responsibilities time after time, they'd be foolish not to look for a new worker or service provider who might do a better job. But state takeovers of schools (forgiving for a moment whether they are based on too narrow a set of metrics for defining "quality") only beg the question: why should a child be limited to only that kind of education which his or her state is able (or willing) to provide, when a superior education can be had just across an invisible state boarder? This is not to suggest, of course, a complete federal takeover or overhaul of schools, but rather to ask what the whole purpose of today's track of education reform if the end-game still consists of a vision in which 50 different states have 50 different standards for what constitutes quality education - and in which heavy incentives exist for a race to the bottom, rather than a race to the top?

Posted by Aaron Tang at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)