In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail", Dr. King directly chastises white clergy for their unwillingness to confront the status quo on the issue of segregation and social justice.  Dr. King alludes to the interconnectedness of us all by saying that 'we are caught on an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly'.  Indeed, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.  This is the inter-related structure of reality.

Like King, we need to be honest and forthright about what ails us in education.  If a child is failing in a school in southeast Washington, DC, it hurts the suburbanite living in Aurora, Colorado. And we all lose.  Until each and every American child receives equal access to a high quality education, our destiny will never be fulfilled, our promise never reached.  This is the last civil rights struggle in America and we need to employ the same sense of urgency and resolve that we did to end segregation during the time of King.

How?  As other speakers have and will allude to, we need to embrace anything that will help a child learn.  Anything.  We need complete accountability in all systems that provide education services to our children.  We must support our teachers to the fullest extent possible and pave the way for new, quality teachers who can enter our schools with the salary that they deserve.  We must empower parents by giving them a voice in their child's education.  Parental choice must occur for all childen to succeed in school.

One final, yet important point.  Our message is clear:  change means change.  Continuing to do what we have done in education, in the same way, is unacceptable.  On that score, the education cartel, those who insist on maintenance and continuation of the status quo, should take note.  We are determined to fight you for meaningful change in our schools by any means necessary.  Our kids can't wait.

As Dr. King said in closing his 'Letter', "If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me.  If I have said anything that understates the truth and my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me."  In the meantime, let none of us rest until we do become the change we are looking for in education, with the ability to guarantee as a fundamental civil right that every child will receive a high quality education each time they walk through a schoolhouse door.