In Defense of Advocacy
I got an email the other day from a student who expressed the concern that efforts like Our Education and the newly launched Prepare The Future, may be wrong-headed, especially to the degree that they seek donations and contributions from the citizens we seek to mobilize. The student wondered whether the 10-year, $250 million plan that Prepare The Future intends to implement in order to mount sustained pressure on elected officials for improving public education (provided the test period works) is the most effective method and use of resources, or whether that money would be better spent on direct services to the youth in question who need the most support.
Here is how I replied. I'd love to hear what you think about the discussion!
Dear ______ Thanks for your very thoughtful message and concerns!
To answer your questions, let me start by encouraging you to read the detailed description of the Prepare The Future campaign and plans for the 10-year long-term effort at http://www.preparethefuture.org/Main/docs/prepare_the_future_info.pdf. As you’ll see, the idea is to build a deep-rooted infrastructure of caring citizens across the country who will put pressure on elected officials to do better by our children.
Which bring us to your fundamental question, which is, is the money generated through the building of this organization more wisely spent on lobbying efforts, or on direct service to those in greatest need? I will certainly admit that there is no clear cut answer to your question. Let me try and suggest two answers for why I believe that advocacy is the best way to use these resources:
1 – The simple scope and scale of our problems in education are such that $250 million over ten years (or $25 million a year) just isn’t actually enough money to make much of a dent for our nation’s most disadvantaged children. Put it this way – there are eleven million students who attend schools in America that have been found to have facilities in inadequate condition. The suggestion of putting the $250 million directly into the hands of those students would give each student a little over two dollars each year—one day’s lunch—for ten years… which is of course not nearly enough to make a dent in improving those students' school buildings, hiring high quality teachers, implementing challenging and engaging curriculum, etc.
2 – The alternative that we are suggesting is similar to the notion of the civil rights movement. Instead of asking donors to give five, twenty or fifty bucks at a time to impoverished African Americans back in the 50s and 60s, what Martin Luther King Jr. and others sought to do was leverage those resources to push for systemic change—changes which only elected officials had the capacity to make in a sweeping scale. In other words, if we believe that children ought to represent more than just 2% of the entire US Federal Budget, and we can convince legislators of the same thing, each percentage point increase is equal to $30 billion dollars more a year for our children (or 1,200 times more per year than the $25 million it would cost Prepare The Future to fight for those changes).
The downside with advocacy, of course, is that there are a couple of potential risks:
1.) If an advocacy group does not succeed in its efforts, the money would indeed have been more wisely spent on direct service to those in need.
2.) If an advocacy group actually hinders the chances of a cause to see improvement (for instance if a group uses wrong-headed and controversial tactics, adopts poorly conceived goals, etc.) then that the stakeholders in question (students) would actually be better off without the group at all, to say nothing of the money being spent more effectively on direct service provision.
Our Education and Prepare The Future both aim to avoid both of the above, pitfalls, obviously, and build effective, impactful, and positive movements. But our ability to do so will depend on citizens like you and I to keep our values and the best interests of children in mind!