Eye on the Ball

The other day I was fortunate enough to speak to some students at the Center for Leadership Development and Research at Stanford’s graduate business school. They must have gotten a glimpse of what has been on my mind.

To be a leader, you can’t get caught up in emotion and in your opposition, I told them. You can’t get bogged down in every negative comment or fabricated controversy, or else you’ll start diverting resources from the things that truly count. You have to lead from the front, but getting derailed by naysayers could put you in a place of fighting from behind.

I summed it up this way: To be a leader, you have to be OK with not being liked.

Lately, I’m realizing I’m pretty good at that.

Sure, I'm often referred to as "controversial" or a "lightening rod," but in the past few months it’s gotten worse. A couple weeks ago, a union boss publicly referred to me as “that Asian bitch” and a blogger called me a “dickhead.” Then, my critics launched an all-out media blitz over a supposedly “secret” memo from four years ago that "proved a cover up." Oh, and the California Democratic Party passed a resolution denouncing StudentsFirst and calling me a Republican.

Out of concern, a friend recently asked me how I deal with those kinds of categorizations and the negativity that can sometimes accompany them.

My answer: I keep my eye on the ball.

In 2010, when I started StudentsFirst, I set out with a singular goal: to change the landscape and environment for education policy to put the focus on what's best for kids. And at that time, I knew I’d have to go to battle with a number of special interest groups from school boards to testing companies to the single-largest, most powerful, best-financed special interest group in our country, the leadership of national teachers unions. And I knew it would be tough. After all, together, the National Education Association and the American Federal of Teachers had a combined budget of $650 million last year, and spent over $61 million of that on lobbying and campaign activity. In California, the California Teachers Association spent another $35 million advocating, and in New York the state’s teachers union spent over $6 million on elections and lobbying.

The special interests are very good at what they do -- preserving their political influence. My operation, in comparison, is tiny. Even if we put ourselves together with every other education reform organization, we’d still be dwarfed by the publicity and political influence operations run by these groups.

So I made the deliberate decision not to be dragged into the inevitable personal attacks. As StudentsFirst grows into additional states -- we are still a new organization -- I choose to focus our resources where they can best help kids.

It may seem odd to some people that I appear to be ignoring blatant personal attacks on me and my record of accomplishments. But to me, these are nothing but distractions that will divert my attention from my goal if I let them.

So, I let that racial epithet about me roll off my back. I actually laughed at that blogger’s comment. Yes, I was tempted to go on a media tour to explain that “secret memo” surfaced by my critics. Because the fact is, it wasn’t secret at all; both the D.C. Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Department of Education were given copies of the so-called “smoking gun” while conducting their independent investigations into cheating in D.C. in 2008 and dismissed it. Both concluded (along with four other separate investigations) that there was no evidence of wide-spread cheating in DCPS. But I realize we don’t have nearly the same resources as our opponents, and decided it wasn’t the best use of my time. It wouldn't be a good use of time twisting over that silly resolution by California’s political party bosses calling me a Republican, because at the end of the day, I was probably one of the only people who even noticed.

I started StudentsFirst to bring some common sense to our public education systems and help our kids have equal access to great schools. I try hard to keep my eye on that ball, and I know everyone else in the education reform movement does too. Our schools are in urgent need of help, and they require all of our attention.

By attacking me personally rather than engaging in policy discussions, my critics are defending an American public education system in which one out of every four kids doesn’t graduate high school. They are apologizing for school bureaucracies that spend billions upon billions of our dollars but produce students who rank just 25th in the world in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading -- behind countries such as Macao, Liechtenstein, Poland, and Singapore. They also blame kids’ parents or their socio-economic status as reasons that our education system does not help every child achieve.

Instead of having a real discussion, the opponents of education reform want to talk about bitches, dickheads, and conspiracy theories. Why? Because when they try talking policy -- facts and results -- they lose.

If we can reach the goal of improving public education for every American student, then I’m OK with not being liked.

And for those leaders-in-training at Stanford, it’s a good lesson: If you want to truly lead, it’s going to come with controversy, so develop that tough skin now, get used to it, and keep your eye on the ball.