The Role Of Faith-Based Organizations

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MR. DIONNE: I am sorry to interrupt a bunch of delightful conversations here. I would like to introduce our friend, Ernie Cortes. Thank you so much. First of all, thanks to everyone in this room for a fantastic discussion this morning. This was a great morning, not just because of the people on the panel but also because of an extraordinary audience. And, again, I want to thank Ming for putting this all together.

It is such a joy to have Ernie Cortes at an event. It was said once upon a time that "When this man speaks, you say, 'How interesting.' And when that man speaks, you say, 'Let's organize.'" And Ernie is in the latter category. And if you have never heard Ernie give a talk, you are in for a real treat. Ernie is the southwest regional director for the Industrial Areas Foundation, which provides leadership training and civic education to poor and moderate income people in more than 40 grassroots organizations. In 1974, Ernie organized Communities Organized for Public Service, otherwise known as "COPS," which is a nationally-recognized, church-based grassroots organization of San Antonio's west and south side communities. He later founded a network of 11 other organizations in Texas, which work together on a state level to help poor people gain a voice on a variety of issues, including education reform.

One of the reasons I so much wanted Ernie to join us today is because what Ernie and the IAF have done in Texas with the Alliance schools is a fascinating example of how religiously-based, congregation-based institutions can organize to improve public institutions. I think one of the troublesome things about this debate about faith-based organizations is that these entities, the government and the churches, the synagogues, the mosques, are cast as enemies or competitors when in fact in many cases the successful working of public institutions depends on the successful workings of our civil society institutions, including perhaps especially our religious institutions.

So that he can send us out of the building organizing, I am very proud to introduce Ernie Cortes and thanks for coming, Ernie.

MR. ERNIE CORTES: Well, as usual, E.J. is way too kind and obviously his flattering remarks either intimidate the hell out of me or challenge me, so hopefully a little bit of both. I want to thank all of you for allowing me to be here with you and to speak to you. I'm trying to figure out where to begin. E.J. told me he didn't want me to talk about organizing.

MR. DIONNE: I never said that.

MR. CORTES: He didn't want to "rap" on organizing. Let me finish my deal, don't interrupt me because you are going to take the wind out of my sails. Later, later, okay. Anyway, he said I shouldn't talk about organizing. I don't want to talk about religion, okay, because I am not competent to do so. And I am not a professional educator, so I don't know what the hell I am going to talk about. So I thought I would talk about what I do, and probably in an inadequate way. What we are doing in the IAF is trying to build a network of broad-based organizations which really are about the creation, if you will, of the political capacity to engage effectively in a school reform agenda.

Now, we got into this business because we were concerned back in the late 70's, early 80's with the whole question of the adequacy and the equity of school funding, in fact, the unconstitutionality, if you will, of the Texas school system. So organizing in San Antonio, organizing in Edgewood, of course, forced us to deal with issues of how do we get the money for books, how do we get the money for bathrooms, how do we get the money for teachers, how do we get the money for anything. And so it took us to Austin a number of times and finally as we began to develop the critical mass in the Rio Grande Valley, in El Paso, and other places, as we began to develop this network of IAF organizations, we began to bring some pressure, effective pressure to bear on public officials. And at the 10th anniversary COPS convention in San Antonio, we were able to get then-governor of the state of Texas, Mark White, to publicly commit himself in front of 15,000 of our leaders to call a special session which would be focused totally on equalizing public education.

Now, in order to do that, of course, we had to have an alliance with the corporate community. And Mark White, ironically, at that time appointed an interesting and somewhat, I thought then, dubious fellow by the name of H. Ross Perot. And so we entered into a rather interesting and somewhat strange alliance with Mr. Perot to try to reform public education and finance in Texas. And we tried to figure out why was he doing this, and he used to argue, I don't know if it was truthful or not, but Nietzsche used to tell us that people do the right thing for the wrong reason. But he used to argue with his fellow associates that the reason he got involved in this was because he would tell them, "I know you don't like the color black because you don't like black people. I know you don't like the color brown because you don't like brown people. But I know you like this color, you like green, okay. And if you are going to get involved, if you want to make money in Texas, you better get involved in public education." So that was his supposed rationale for why he and the corporate community got involved in this whole issue of public school finance.

Be that as it may or whether that is true or not true, it is irrelevant. One of my favorite theologians is a fellow by the name of Mario Moreno, Continflas to most of you, because he did a movie called El Portero. And in the movie he says, "And Jesus said, and if He didn't, He should have." Or as my friend, Bill Greider used to say, there was a saying in The Washington Post news room that some stories are too good to check out. So take that one in that same vein.

All right. Anyhow, for all these reasons, we got involved in public school finance and were successful. And we initiated a bill called House Bill 72, which didn't equalize public education in Texas, but did generate a billion new dollars in tax dollars for property poor school districts. And as a result of that, there was the ability of many property poor school districts to do things that they could not do before. Now, I want to be clear that money matters. Money matters. Money matters. But money is not the only thing that matters, and we found that out, unfortunately, particularly in Austin where, because even though there was a lot more money for poor school districts, it didn't make much impact on the performance of those particular schools. And part of the reason was that we found out that it doesn't do a whole lot of good to reduce the classroom sizes, for example, for schools from 22 to 1 or 25 to 1, or even 30 to 1, to 12 to 1 if the teacher still teaches 12 kids the same way she taught 30 kids. And so, unfortunately, you can have 12 kids in a class or, as my son told me at Swarthmore where there were eight kids in each one of his classes, "Dad, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference if there are eight kids in the class if the professor stands up there and lectures the whole time and there is no engagement." What good does it matter to have eight kids if all he does is lecture as if there were 500 kids in the class. Well, that same thing is true, unfortunately, what is true for Jacob also, unfortunately, was true for kids in Austin. And as a result, we saw very, very little change in a lot of property poor school districts in the east side of Austin and in Fort Worth.

And I am going to let one of my colleagues later talk about what went on in Fort Worth, and I am going to let Dennis Shirley talk about what went on in Fort Worth at Morningside Middle School. But I want to talk to you a little bit about how we got into the Alliance School Initiative in Austin after having successfully turned around the worst performing middle school in Fort Worth, Texas through the involvement of a school principal, Odessa Raven, and through the involvement of the organization that my colleague, Mr. Willie Bennett, works for. After successfully getting that initiative going with that school district, we began to try the same kind of strategy in Austin. And we picked a school which was the worst performing elementary school in Austin, Texas, a school by the name of Zavala, who had a brand new teacher named Al Melton, who unfortunately had the temerity to tell his parents the truth because even though the kids were making A's and B's in their grades, when the tests came out, the kids unfortunately were often two and three grade levels behind. So what was happening essentially is that the teachers had figured out a kind of innovative strategy for grading kids. If a kid was in the fifth grade but was performing at a second grade level but was doing well at the second grade level, they would get an A, even though they were really doing second grade or third grade work because they felt like that they were doing the best they could and that they were improving. And, consequently, even though the work was second grade or third grade, they were getting A's. So what was happening was that then the parents didn't find this out, unfortunately, until they tried to get their schools admitted to magnet schools, science academies, which are often within eight and 10 blocks, and were finding out that their kids kept getting turned down. And they didn't understand why that was happening because their kids were doing so well at the elementary school level. And so they began to raise questions and then Al, who was the new principal and he didn't know any better, he showed them the results of their test scores. And, of course, the parents when they found that out hit the ceiling and screamed. And then there was a meeting of the parents and the teachers.

And to make a long story short, there was what our British friends would call a slaying match, which pretty well polarized the school.

Now, about this time we began to get involved with Zavala and began to work with Al Melton. And, frankly, he turned to us because he just didn't know what else to do. He had turned off his teaching staff; they were demoralized because he had not defended them because he felt that what they were doing was not defendable. And he had turned off the parents because they felt like the school that they thought was a good school was really not. So some of the parents left and some of the teachers left.

So, we began to put together the remnants of that particular faculty and the community. And to make a long story short, we began to organize the parents and the teachers of Zavala. We began to do all kinds of things, get the parents and teachers to organize, first of all, to get a clinic inside the school, get the parents and teachers organized to get an after school program, to get the parents and teachers organized to get rid of some dangerous impediments. To make a long story short, as a result of this collaborative relationship that began to develop between the parents and the teachers, Zavala, after doing some other innovative things like getting an additional grade, a science grade, a sixth grade science academy to prepare kids to go to the magnet schools, Zavala went from being dead last, to being a blue ribbon school. Zavala went from a school which had a teaching staff which was demoralized. Zavala went from a school where teachers were dumped into the school or only had brand new teachers in the school and, because of that, had incredibly high turnover. Zavala became a school where there was a waiting list of teachers wanting to get into the school.

I guess for me the most important thing that happened were two things. Two things happened at Zavala which I thought were indicators of success. Number one was that four of the teachers of Zavala Elementary School became principals of other (what became known as) Alliance schools. And, secondly, in addition to the fact that attendance went up and parental involvement went up significantly, Al Melton got a call from his boss, the superintendent. And he said, "Mr. Melton, your parents and your teachers have been down at the school board demanding after-school programs, demanding health clinics. Now, they just came back here and demanded this science academy. They are out of control. You've got to rein them in." And Al said, "You know, you are right, they are out of control, but there's nothing you or I can do about it, and I am not sure I would want to do anything about it if I could because I think that is their rights as citizens."

Well, the Zavala model became an interesting one for us because now there are 18 what we call Alliance schools in Austin, 18 schools which come together on a regular basis and collaborate and try to figure out what they can do for public school reform. And that model has spread to El Paso, the Rio Grande Valley, and so now in Texas there's about 120 Alliance schools. Not all of them have the great success that Zavala did, but, by and large, these schools are doing much better in terms of increases in achievement than most of the schools in the state of Texas.

More important for us, what they are beginning to do is to create what we think are a powerful constituency which is committed to school reform, a constituency not just of parents but of parents, teachers, and school principals, a constituency which also takes into account the role of congregations, churches, synagogues and other religious institutions, community-based organizations and teacher organizations, unions and other bodies which are committed to the general welfare of kids and community well-being. The evidence of that is that the Alliance schools state-wide have been able to create what we call an Investment Capital Fund, a fund of now $14 million a year. As we speak, they are now beginning to agitate and to advocate that that fund be increased to $20 million a year, a fund which makes it possible for grants to go to the particular school campuses of up to $100,000.

And those grants are for three purposes. One is to restructure the schools, to create a different model or a different culture of collaboration between parents and teachers and classified workers and congregations and other institutions to begin to restore somewhat the civic culture of that particular community. Two is to change the kind of instructional culture that goes on inside the school, moves from one which is top-down and bureaucratic and unilateral to one which is much more collaborative. And, three, is to hopefully reconnect the fabric, the social fabric of the school with that of the community.

Those capital grants go to schools which are willing to collaborate with 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organizations, which have a track record, a history of organizing parents, have a history of holding schools accountable, and have a history of being able to effectively mentor and guide and develop leadership. If you read between the lines of the legislation, you will kind of gather that our model of the kind of organizations that we thought schools ought to be able to collaborate were an IAF type organization, one which would have this kind of capacity to create the kind of collaborative power between parents, teachers, and community institutions.

What our vision is that these Alliance schools are about, number one, increasing the capacity of kids to learn at high levels by developing rigorous standards of inquiry, rigorous standards of accountability in education. But also we think that public education has a larger role, and that is it has the responsibility to teach all of us what it means to be an American, what it is to be involved in this kind of civic culture. And I happen to believe that firmly, but then I read a book which says that actually there was a Supreme Court decision which said that that's the role of public schools. I can't remember the court case, but I'm sure David Hornbeck can tell me, but there is actually such a Supreme Court decision which says that public schools do have that responsibility and the rest of us have the right to hold public schools accountable to teaching our young people the attitudes, disposition, and culture necessary for them to be effective participants in a democratic society and hopefully aspire to republican virtues.

Now, I happen to believe that public schools are public institutions. And by "public," I don't necessarily mean governmental. What I mean, I happen to believe that public schools ought to be institutions which are the public expression of our commitment to development of our young people, of our commitment to the education of our children. Now, Hannah Arendt wrote an essay called, "The Importance of Education," where she talked about that there are three purposes to education. Number one is to open up the world to children. Number two is to protect children from the world. But number three is to protect the world from children. Now, I happen to believe that this would not be a great world if it was run by people like my son. Now, he is a great guy and I love him, but he's 18 right now. And I don't think that 18 years old ought to be running the world. So, I think there is a role for an institution which is going to protect us old folks from the likes of my children. And if we don't get together as adults, we are going to get run over. And so when I was a young person, I didn't believe in trusting anybody over 30 but today I don't believe in trusting anybody under 30.

Anyhow, the vision of Alliance schools comes out of my own experience, my own experience of growing up in San Antonio where, when I grew up, there were 250 adults who felt responsibility for me. There were 250 adults who thought they owned me, and so going to school in the morning was like going through Checkpoint Charlie because every street corner, I was going to be interrogated by any number of adults about what I was going to do and where I was going and what was I going to do when I grew up and what was I studying, and all kinds of questions. I would get on the school bus and the bus driver would remind me that he knew my parents. And so the explicit understanding was that these 250 adults felt that they had the right to intrude and to invade my life, to inquire about me. When I went to see my grandmother and my grandfather, I had aunts and uncles and all kinds of people so that my brother and I would have to rehearse our answers to them.

Now, this culture was so thick, and frankly somewhat depressive, so I got out of town as fast as I could and I went to, of all places, Texas A&M, but somehow managed to survive three bonfires. But, nonetheless, I compare this experience of growing up in San Antonio to the one I now see as I am organizing in east Los Angeles and south central Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles where instead of 250 adults organized against every kid, sometimes you have communities where 50 or 60 kids are organized against every adult and the adults are living under house arrest.

Now, that kind of situation where adults are disconnected from one another, isolated from one another, not connected to communal institutions does not augur well for public education, because I happen to believe that the only reason that we can even talk about a time when public schools were successful was because we had two things going for us then. One is we had lots of very bright, intelligent and educated women who couldn't do anything else because we weren't willing to let them do anything else and so, as a consequence, we were subsidized by their willingness to sacrifice themselves to public schools. Those women now are heads of universities, doctors, lawyers, heads of labor unions, professors. And so if we are going to attract and maintain that kind of talent, we are going to have to be willing to spend a lot more than we currently do on public schools. And the second thing we had going for us was we had the involvement of whole numbers of parents, particularly women, who were running schools and running unions and running other kinds of institutions who were willing and had the capacity then to put time and energy and money into collaboration with public education.

Well, the capacity of those kind of communal family, institutionally-based, faith-based institutional involvement in public schools is unfortunately not present today and, of course, we're not willing to pay the kind of salaries that we are going to have to pay in order to maintain the quality of public schools.

So for all those reasons, we think we have got to begin seriously organizing to make public schools much more effective in Texas and in the Southwest. For all those reasons, we think we are going to have to, again, do those three things that we think are real important. Number one is create this powerful political constituency for school reform. And that means teaching parents, teachers, community leaders how to think about power, how to understand power, and how to get power, not unilateral power, not the command and control model of power, but one which is much more collaborative. Two, again, we are going to have to change the culture of education, the culture of schools. We can no longer rely on a factory model of education. We can no longer rely on a bureaucratic model of education. We can no longer rely on an educational system which is basically about teaching basic skills in literacy and numeracy, which are appropriate to a factory system. We now have to recognize, that as Frank Levy and Dick Murnane talk about in their book, Teaching the New Basic Skills, that if young people are going to do well, they're going to have to master algebra, they're going to have to be able to collaborate, they're going to have to create new knowledge, they're going to have to be able to make public presentations. In other words, they're going to have a whole range of other skills. And, unfortunately, the difficulty, at least in Texas, maybe other places are different, but in Texas we don't have institutions which teach our teachers those soft skills, those critical skills that Murnane and Levy talk about. We don't have schools of education which teach collaboration. We don't have schools of education which teach making public presentations. We don't have schools of education which teach how do you create new knowledge.

And I ask the question, if the teachers don't know how to teach these skills, if they don't understand them, then how in God's name can we expect the kids to know these skills. And how can we hold the teachers accountable, if we haven't created models or institutions which are about the business of teaching those kinds of skills? And so part and parcel of our strategy is how do we begin to develop an institutional model that enables teachers and principals and parents and other institutional leaders to learn these critical skills that Levy and Murnane talk about in their book.

I want to say a couple of other things and then I want to open it up for questions or comments. One is that I happen to believe that all the reform efforts that all of us are involved in are not going to make much difference unless we can figure out how do we develop the capacity of our principals of the schools, particularly elementary and middle and high school, to become educational leaders. Unfortunately, in Texas, most of our school principals are compliance officers rather than educational leaders. Their job is to comply, to dot i's, to cross t's. Their job is to comply with all the rules and regulations which come down from the federal government, from the state of Texas, and also from the local school districts and whatever the expectations they have inside their profession. Very few of our principals feel that they have the space not to be in compliance, but to be educational leaders.

Number two is most of our principals, in Texas at least, don't go to school everyday to learn about learning. I asked our school principals the question: What are you learning about learning? Because if you're not thinking about how you are learning, then how is it possible for teachers to think about what they're learning and how they are learning. And if teachers don't have that attitude of the joy of learning, than I am not sure how we inculcate that in kids. How do we inculcate in kids the notion that learning can be creative, can be enjoyable, that learning can be something which gives them energy and hope and imagination unless that attitude, that perspective is inculcated by teachers and principals.

Final point. What does all this have to do with President Bush's faith-based initiatives because I know that is the topic of this meeting. Nothing, but maybe everything. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't even understand it, to be quite honest with you. Number one is what the Alliance schools are an example of is how people of faith, people who are in churches, congregations, synagogues, Muslim societies, can begin to draw from the deep reservoir of inspiration and understanding and meaning that their faith tradition gives them, whether they be Jews or Christians or Muslims or Buddhists, but they then therefore have the responsibility to translate their traditions into meaningful and understandable public policy. And they have to be responsible therefore to be evaluated appropriately — their actions have to be evaluated not on the basis of their faith traditions but on the basis of the common faith that we all share, which is our civic culture. I think that John Courtney Murray said this best, that we can operate out of the traditions of the Gospel, but we have the responsibility to translate those traditions and those ideas into understandable public conversations and dialogue and actions.

And so, therefore, in the IAF language, the Alliance schools are not faith-based institutions. The IAF organizations are not faith-based institutions. They are political organizations. They are political organizations which are involved in public policy, political in the sense of engaged in debate and dialogue about issues of education, and they draw deep inspiration and meaning from their faith traditions. But we don't want to be held accountable as faith-based organizations. We want to be held accountable as organizations which are involved in public policy and in public dialogue and public debate. Now, I don't know whether or not that's anything interesting or new, but I just want to make that statement because we don't want to be put in the position of providing services. We don't want to be put into positions of doing that which the federal government doesn't want to do or the state governments don't want to do. We see our position as one of beginning of hopefully playing a somewhat engaging and hopefully prophetic role in a sense of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable in this whole business of public education.

Okay, I am going to stop here and see if anybody has got anything at all to say and if not, I am going to let my colleague, Mr. Bennett, give some examples of what we're doing.

Yes, sir?

Q: I am curious, what is your experience generally with students that have drug problems? And do you have any direct involvement or observation of Teen Challenge in Texas specifically, because I have been personally involved with Teen Challenge in this area. And my belief is that the success of that group is the fact that they are discipling young people to be disciples of Jesus Christ in a very serious, committed way. And I can understand the success because of that, but also I can understand objections from Jews, Muslims, even professed mainstream evangelical or charismatic Christians who may not understand what discipleship really is all about. And I'm wondering what would you say about that because it seems to me that that is one organization in Texas that is being pointed to as a success story, but I see it's problematic with many?

MR. CORTES: I'm not competent to evaluate that. I have seen evidences of people being cured of drug problems when there is extensive networks of family support, when they begin to feel that there's meaning and significance in their lives. Now for some people, meaning and significance means being born again in the Christian faith. For some people, it is being able to say Allah Akabar. And for some people, it is Shema Israel, Israel, the Lord our God is One. Now, there are different ways in which people find meaning and significance in their lives. Some of our Founding Fathers found meaning and significance in the ability to make very, very heroic commitments out of a vision of what kind of society that they want to organize. So I happen to believe that there are all kinds of ways in which people can find meaning and significance and any of those ways are important.

A fellow named Jim Stigler wrote a book on the teaching gap, and he argues that you can point to what the Japanese do about teaching math and how great that is and significant that is, but when American teachers try to adopt it, they don't do so well because they don't recognize that the Japanese teaching method is encased in a culture, in a tradition. And so there are certain expectations that kids have of what teachers do, and if those expectations aren't changed, then adopting a different teaching technique is not going to do much for kids. So when you push them hard, he says the one thing that does matter is getting kids to have ownership over their own education, and so whatever teaching method you use to get that is going to work because what matters really is how do you get teachers and parents and the kids themselves to change their expectations.

Now, I happen to believe that is also connected to meaning and significance. And so, therefore, if you can figure out a way in which kids can get meaning and significance, then I think that is going to be an important dimension. Now, I happen to believe — I'm a Roman Catholic, so being part of a community of faith is very, very important to me. But I've seen Roman Catholics who go to mass every single day of their lives also not do very good things with their kids. And I've seen the children of those Roman Catholics not end up in very good kinds of situations, having problems with drug addiction and having problem with alcoholism. So I've come to the conclusion that some scholars probably could have told me a lot sooner, that it doesn't really matter whether or not I go to church or my wife goes to church, what matters is whether or not the parents of the kids that my kid hangs out with go to church or not; to wit, the existence of thick networks of relationships which reinforce some coherent values which make it possible for kids to have meaning and significance by putting off immediate gratification. I don't know if that answers your question or not but it is the best I can do.

E.J., you had a question and this gentleman over here had one.

MR. DIONNE: I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about the methodology of the Alliance school organizing.

MR. CORTES: Sure.

MR. DIONNE: Because the reason I think it's relevant to today's conversation is the way in which you use congregations as a base to bring people together. You took what faith networks existed in communities, which were often congregation-based, in many cases in Texas, they were Catholic, but they were not just Catholic, they were Baptist, they were other kinds of churches. And how did that work in terms of bringing teachers out to the community, parents into the schools, and how did you use the churches as a base for this kind of action?

MR. CORTES: Okay. Your question is pertinent and relevant and important and right, but it presumes something which is not quite always true, and I want to make this point because a lot of people forget this. I even correct myself. Not all churches have thick networks. Some churches have very thin networks. Some churches have no networks at all. And so part of what we are often faced with is not how do you use the thick networks of the church to get involved in public education, but how do you enable the church to create thick networks by getting involved in public education. To wit, a lot of churches don't have any young parents connected to them because they don't see the church as that interesting and relevant. So part and parcel of the strategy oftentimes was trying to figure out how do you get the parents who send their kids, for example, what is the elementary school in Austin which is right next to Mount Olive —

MR. BENNETT: Morningside.

MR. CORTES: No, no, no. In Austin. Morningside's Fort Worth. Blackshire Elementary School. How do you get the parents of the kids in Blackshire Elementary School, the school is right next to Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, but none of the parents in Blackshire go to Mount Olive, and no parent or no adult in Mount Olive has got a kid in Blackshire. And most of the adults in Mount Olive are over the age of 60 years old. So the question then is not just how do you get these thick supposed church networks involved in schools, but how do you begin to reconnect some of these parents to an institution which will enable them to raise their kids so that they have meaning and significance and feel some sort of connectedness to a larger vision and what's important in life.

So part of what we have to do sometimes is teach church leaders, institutional church leaders, how to identify leadership and develop leadership and train leadership and mentor leadership, how to organize a core team in their congregation of leaders and potential leaders who then can relate to the public school. While at the same time we're doing that, we are working inside the school and identifying potential leaders among parents and teachers and principals and getting them connected to the school so that we then develop a model where the school agitates the congregation with the vision and values of a democratic culture, which, unfortunately, have been latent or non-existent sometimes, and then getting the congregation to agitate the school with the vision and values of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism, or whatever appropriate tradition there is, and to get them into an engaging, robust, and thoughtful conversation about what do we do, how do we create the context for kids to do well.

So in one sense your question is very, very relevant. In that light, what we then do is look for people who are relational, look for people who've got energy, look for people who have got some imagination and some curiosity inside a congregation. Look for people who happen to believe that they are not just responsible for their own biological kids, but they are also responsible for other kids as well, because the question we then ask is we go to a congregation and draw a line of whatever the congregation thinks is its turf or parish or community of interest and say, okay, now, who is responsible for what happens to those kids? And they say, well, their parents are. And then we ask them, if they are Jewish or Christian, we ask them sometimes to listen to the words of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah says to his people in exile, he says, "I've been sent into exile with the Jews in Babylon, but I want you to build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage," et cetera. Anyway, but the point is seek the welfare of the city, because there you're going to find your own welfare. In Hebrew, the term was "shalom." Well, seeking the shalom of the city means seeking the overall betterment of that particular community, making sure the right relationship exists between God and the community and between the community and the community. But shalom also implies "Mishpot," or justice and so therefore we have to create those kinds of institutions which make it possible for everybody to participate.

Well, if you believe in this stuff — if you don't believe in it, that is okay, but you say you do, you say you're committed to all this stuff. Then how are you going to act out that tradition? How are you going to act out that faith? So we ask them to kind of look at what their church says that they are all about, what their congregation says they're all about. And usually they respond. Sometimes they respond by throwing me out, but anyway they usually respond.

I don't know if I answered your question or not, E.J.

MR. DIONNE: Well, I guess I was curious about a little bit more detail about going into a congregation, what you organize them to do, and how you pull the congregation into engagement, and how you used the congregations to pull parents into schools and pull teachers out into the community?

MR. CORTES: Well, I was trying to get you to think about that. The model of the Alliance school is not one of just working with the congregation.

MR. DIONNE: No, I understand that. But it was the use of the congregation as a base of organizing the larger project which involved bringing parents into the schools more and bringing teachers out into the community.

MR. CORTES: Well, okay, let me give you an example again. Most of the parents who live in Zavala were in the parish boundaries. They were primarily Latino, Mexicano. They lived inside the parish boundaries of Christo Rey Catholic Church. Now, they had a very, very weak, attenuated relationship with that particular congregation, but they went there sometimes. They went for ashes. They went for mass, et cetera.

Now, we pointed out to the pastor that these were his, quote, parishioners or potential parishioners. Now, if you can't get a pastor on any other basis, you usually can get them on the issue or mortgage. And that is people do the right thing for the wrong reason. And I've sat down with pastors and I will say, "Look, you want to do things in this parish. You have got to pay your mortgage. You have got to raise your budget." I don't say it this directly, please understand, but the logic is there. And if you have more people coming to mass or more people coming to service, if you go, Reverend Britt, from 150 people attending your service to 500, they'll tend to put more money in the plate, particularly if you teach them about tithing and the envelope. But how are you going to get them to want to come here. Well, one way, of course, is the charisma of your preaching. And some people will come for that. But other people come because it's in their interest. And their interest doesn't mean their narrow selfish interest, it means they have relationships which are important, their children. So you then begin to get pastors recognizing that they're going to build their congregation by being engaged.

But it is important then for the principal and the school leaders to understand that they can't do what they want to do by being isolated from the rest of the community. You can't teach kids certain things if you only focus on their time in the classroom because the question is the time outside the classroom either going to reinforce, add to, or undermine that which is going on inside the classroom. So part of it is getting parents to realize and teachers to realize that it is in their interest to get parents collaborating with them, working with them. Now, this line of thinking doesn't work with everybody. It works with people that we call leaders and potential leaders. So you go to those folks who got this kind of imagination, this kind of curiosity, who really deeply care about kids, particularly their own, and are willing to recognize that you can't get for your kid what you want unless you enable other kids to get what they want. I can't get for Jacob Cortes a good education and a safe environment unless I can also get it for his peers, for the kids he hangs out with and he works with. And then you begin to identify who are those leaders and potential leaders.

Then you begin to teach them how to do what we call relational meetings, how to do one-on-one meetings, how to go to a David Hornbeck, how to go to a E.J. Dionne and find out what their interests are, what their background is, what their situation [is] and begin to activate their energy, their curiosity, their imagination. And then I get David Hornbeck to go to Willie Bennett and I get Willie Bennett to go to somebody else. And we begin to develop then a network of relationships of people inside a congregation. You're doing the same thing inside the school. You're doing the same thing with the classified workers. You're doing the same thing with people who belong to CBO organizations. You do the same thing with the union leadership. And so you begin to identify what we call core teams of leaders and potential leaders and then get them to collaborate and to do some deep reflection on what is the mission of this school. And we get them to look at what's going on. You know, what happens to kids who don't go to college? What happens to kids who don't get a decent education? What kind of income do they have? What kind of situation do they have? What is their probability of success; that is, not getting murdered, not getting on drugs, not being in prison, particularly if they're African-American or Latino? So we begin to mug the parents with reality and mug the leaders with reality. This is what's going to happen to your kid unless you do something, unless you intervene.

There is a study which was done by the board of regents of the University of Texas which says unless there is massive intervention, the only statistic which is going to increase for 18 to 25 year olds is dropouts. And so we are not going to have the kids going to UTEP or UTSA or University of Texas over the next 10 years because all we're going to have is a bunch of dropouts. And not only is that going to create problems for our community, it's going to create problems for the income and the economic growth of the state of Texas. So you begin to teach them how to think about the role that education plays in the upward mobility of their kids, in the health of their kids and the ability of their kids to do well.

I don't know if I am answering your question or not. Yes, ma'am?

Q: I had a question about [inaudible] funding that enabled you to shrink class size and so that it would really make a difference. What's the next strategy?

MR. CORTES: The next strategy was to begin to recognize that that's not going to happen unless parents understand what a good school looks like and are able then to ask the right questions, to pose interesting, challenging, albeit collaborative questions to teachers, that why are we using the kind of curriculum that we're using, so that we begin to get parents taking some responsibility for the education of their children and recognizing it can't just be done by the teacher, and that there are impediments to their kids learning, and what are those impediments. And we have got to figure out together collaboratively what we learn together to do differently together. And sometimes it's taking an example, for example, of reading recovery and basing our thinking about how kids learn on that model even though it's very, very expensive and we can't afford it for every kid. My daughter taught it, it works, but it is very, very expensive. But can we learn some lessons from that model? Can we learn what are the most interesting ways of teaching mathematics and how do we do that? Can we take an after school program, as was done in south Texas, and kids learning dance steps and then learning numbers through dance steps? Can they learn about measurements by taking cooking classes, about geometry by learning how to sew, learning how to think by doing chess? Is there a way that teachers and parents collaboratively organize an after school program in such a way that it connects to the curriculum so it's a way of really extending the school day? Can we organize Saturday classes which tutor kids so they begin to — because we think that all kids can learn at high levels if we have enough time and other intervention strategies?

I don't know if that's responsive to your question or not. But not just collaboration, but intervention ideas, doing research actions, going to the University of Texas, to Rice, to whomever, to find out what are the best practices. What can we learn from other people, from what other students have done, what other universities have done. In El Paso, we have a collaborative where the IAF organization, EPISO, is working with University of Texas in El Paso so that we begin to get the parents to understand what do their kids need to learn in order to be able to do well in college. And get them to do that when they are in the first grade, not when they are in tenth grade or ninth grade. And get parents to sign agreements and commitments that they will do the following things, and if they do the following things, then their kid will be guaranteed a scholarship to the University of Texas at El Paso or the University of Texas in San Antonio, wherever.

Q: I was fortunate enough to be part of the work in Edgewood through the NEA as a consultant. How is that project progressing now? I was amazed, it actually impacted me in a lot of ways. How is that work in Edgewood going now, and has it continued?

MR. CORTES: I think it's going well. We have found that, for example, there was this guy — I forget the guy's name. The rich guy, real rich guy with the voucher. Not exactly vouchers. But, any way, he was going to try to get all these kids out of Edgewood. Well, they've come back to some of our Alliance schools, to a number of our Alliance schools, because they found that they could get as good an education in public schools if they're organized in such a way that you create this kind of collaborative model, at least our experience is.

MR. DIONNE: Before we close, I want to make sure there are no more questions. I just wanted the Reverend Willie Bennett to talk a little bit. He is the lead organizer of Allied Communities of Tarrant in Fort Worth, Texas. He's part of this Alliance School Project, and I would love him to come up and talk a little bit about his experiences before we go back to our meeting.

MR. CORTES: Yes. Willie's organized in both Dallas, Austin and Fort Worth and has worked with Alliance schools in all three cities. So, Willie, if you don't mind sharing some of your insights on that and feel free to contradict me on anything. We'll deal with it later.

MR. DIONNE: That's collaborative something.

REVEREND WILLIE BENNETT: That sounds ominous. My name is Willie Bennett. I'm lead organizer with Allied Communities of Tarrant in Fort Worth, Texas, the sister city to Dallas, Texas. We're 30 miles apart. We're where all the happening things are in the Metroplex.

I was sitting at home two years ago. My youngest daughter was just born and she was about four or five days old and the phone rings. It is my social organizer and she said, "Have you read the papers?" I'm like, "No, I haven't read the paper. I'm trying to sleep." She said, "Well, they're trying to cut the funding for the after school program, and I am getting calls from the leaders. What should we do? What do we need to think about doing?"

Well, what had happened was there were 17 schools that were receiving after school funding which was based on work that we had done with an Alliance school to set up an innovative after school program and a limited number of schools were able to access a small amount of money to try to duplicate our efforts. The district had said they were going to fund us and they had everybody do all the paperwork, but they decided at the last minute without talking to the schools, talking to the parents, that they would unilaterally cut it and it was going to happen that night. And so we were reading [about it] in the paper that day.

And so what happened, at the end of the day at the meeting, at the school board meeting, there were 50 of our leaders, congregational leaders that were there saying, "No, you cannot cut this. We know this works. And more importantly than the program is the process. And the way you have shut out parents and the schools from participating in a decision that is going to affect their school."

Well, that evening, they put the money back. But the leaders said, "Look, if we're going to continue to work with this, let's go after some real money. None of this $5,000 or $25,000 a hit. Let's go after $50,000 per school and expand it." And so that's what they did. They entered into the public debate about what needs to happen with kids after school. And as part of another referendum, we got after school programs on there, and we passed $2.5 million for after school programs on school sites, funding at $50,000 per school for over 50 schools. Now, instead of a couple of hundred kids with after school, we have 3,000 kids in after school. And these things are happening. One, they're safe. Two, they do their homework every night, which is a big deal for us in Fort Worth. And, third, the kids are enjoying going to school and attendance rates are going up because of the after school programs. So that is one way that the congregations who are part of Allied Communities of Tarrant have said these things are important to us and these things we value in our schools. We want to help make those things happen.

When I was in Austin, there was another situation with Austin Interfaith. We were invited into a school that was low-performing and there was no parental involvement. And so we went around and we were saying what needs to happen, what needs to happen. And we found out that there were rats in the school. And so the parents wouldn't come out for anything else. They didn't come out for TAAS score meeting. But we prompted the principals to tell the parents about the rats. And when the parents heard about the rats, even though they didn't understand the TAAS scores and how bad they were, they understood rats. And so two days later, they were in a meeting, 23 parents — this school had had no parental involvement — 23 parents at 7:00 a.m. in the morning with the head of maintenance for the school district, who had already told the principal, "You know, we can't go out there and do anything about those rats. We've got those west side parents talking to us, and you know how those parents are. We had to get a crew out there right away."

So armed with what they had heard from the principal about the maintenance guy, they came, and before that meeting was over with, you had crews patching up holes, fixing doors, all kinds of stuff to deal with the rat issue. Well, when the parents saw that, they said, "Hey, we didn't know we could do that." And so then they said, "We want our nurse back because our kids get sick and that is important to have them there." So they got their nurse back. Then they said, "We want our playground re-done." And so they found an architect. As they were building relationships with other parents, people were coming out of the woodwork at the school with talent. You know, in this low-income inner-city school, there were actually people who had talent. Imagine that. And the architect worked with the park and rec department, and they got a new playground there, the first time in 30 years.

Then in a meeting of 200 parents, the school that had no parental involvement, they're ready for their next issue. They said, "We want to have a pre-magnet program in our school so that our kids can get the best education this district has to offer because none of our African-American or Latino kids are getting into the magnet program." And so they created with the organization a brand new feeder pattern of brown and black children going into the magnet program there in Austin.

These are issues that excite me when I think about my daughters going into school, the ability of parents to do more than just tutor, to sell those daggone cookies, clean out of the flower bed. As one principal said to me, "We don't have enough people" — this is an Hispanic school — "to come clean out our flower beds." And I'm like, "Well, hell, I don't want to clean out my own flower bed. Why would I want to come down and clean out yours and my kids are failing in your school?" Well, but there's more that parents and community can do, and they get interested when they know that they're making a difference and their input really amounts to something.

One final story. This is with Manuel Jara Elementary School in Fort Worth, 95 percent Hispanic, mono-lingual-speaking parents. The parents used to come to the school and they would look at the kids eating breakfast through windows, because they were not welcome into the school. The new principal came, asked us to come in and work with them. We went in, did a walk, visited the parents. We had 80 folks there from our congregations and the teachers. That resulted in a meeting of 300 parents, the largest meeting that they had done in years. And with fear and trembling, the teachers broke up all the parents into small groups and led what we call house meetings. And they asked the parents, "What do you like about our school? And what would you like to see different?" The teachers were so afraid they were going to get beat up. But they found parents who loved what was happening. They respected the school. And they were things that they wanted to see happen. And they were willing to help now that they were asked.

The bottom line was that led to a meeting of 500 parents where they got ESL classes in that school, where they got their one-way street fixed, which they wanted, and they got speed bumps and crossing guards. That school is now a recognized school, which means the kids are all scoring above 80 percentile. It started from 30. Now, they were at 80. And it is one of our show schools on the north side, but it is because of the engagement of parents and teachers and community organizations.

[Applause.]

MR. CORTES: One final thought and then I'll let you all go. A lot of people ask about, we see this as examples in one school, like Zavala or Morningside or Sam Houston Elementary School in the Rio Grande Valley, which Dennis Shirley has written extensively about: how does this affect the scale? In Austin, like I mentioned earlier, we've got now 18 Alliance schools, but more importantly, I think, we're beginning to develop a collaborative relationship with the district. The superintendent, Pat Forgione and ourselves are trying to figure out is there a way which we can figure out how to get student achievement up in a way which enables kids to really do well. That is go to college and not just do well on TAAS tests. We found out to our sorrow that there's a study done which was kind of hidden before the election, for obvious reasons, that the board of regents at the University of Texas — which says that there's no relationship between the increasing TAAS scores and kids doing well on SAT scores.

So our concern is we want to be able to show that kids do well, and we have examples of kids who are doing well, who also do well on TAAS, but are there other indicators? And so we're working with the school district in Austin to try to figure out is there another alternative assessment. We're working with Lauren Resnick from the University of Pittsburgh and Pat Forgione from Austin to see whether or not there can be a collaborative model developed so that we can really say to ourselves that there are other indicators of kids doing very, very well besides just doing well on TAAS. So we're trying to develop that, and thank you very much for your time.

MR. DIONNE: I want to thank Willie Bennett and Ernie Cortes for that inspiring discussion. If I could tell a very brief story before we move to the other room. My late mom ran a storefront library in my hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts. And it was a library that served mostly working-class kids. And when the federal money just disappeared in 1981, my mother went to organize. And at the first public hearing, she turned out a lot of people and her first four witnesses were a priest, a rabbi, a minister, and a nun. And I didn't realize that my mom was both an IAF organizer and into faith-based organizations long before they became fashionable. But I've always thought of her experience. And she got her money too. I always thought her experience actually talks about the complicated relationship between talk of faith-based organizations and talk of public service. And Ernie Cortes, I think, and Willie Bennett in so many ways embody that.

Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE AND END OF PANEL]