My ministry just built 161 affordable homes for first-time home buyers. I ask my parishoners to give 10 percent to the Lord, and tell them to give 10 percent to themselves to buy a home.

The first question they ask isn't "How much is a house going to cost?" or "Is there crime in the community?" The first question is "What about the schools?" If they think the community won't educate their children well, they will go elsewhere. Part of the problem of trying to rebuild urban communities is the reality that people choose not to live in them because the educational system in so many of them is so bad.

The public school system seems to me to have four tiers.

Tier one represents the suburban communities where the average child will get a good education.

In tier two are the students in urban communities who will have opportunities through programs that allow them to be bused out or programs in which parents are able to manipulate the system to get their children into a school that will give them a quality education.

The third tier is the most troubling one: most of our urban school districts, where the majority of students are not at grade level in any category of any significance.

Most people don't talk about the fourth tier - special education - but it is the most damaging one: once children have been placed in special education, they rarely have an opportunity to get out. They are separated from their peers, and they wind up at a point where they can't really go back into the classroom, so they go to the streets and cause the kinds of problems that make it necessary for us to build jails.

Old Books, Powerful Knowledge

I come from a family of thirteen children. My parents went through the fifth and sixth grade. I grew up in a two-bedroom house with double beds in the girls' bedroom and rollaway beds for the boys in the kitchen and living room. By every definition, I should not have a doctoral degree; I should not have served eleven years in the U.S. House of Representatives. By every definition, I should have been shut out a long time ago.

But there was something special about four teachers teaching eight grades in four rooms out in the country in Houston, Texas. We rode a bus fourteen miles past three white schools. Our teachers callenged us to understand that we would have to meet certain standards, and that if we failed in our pursuit of excellence, the fact that we happened to be African American and poor was no excuse. We got other childrens' old books, but if we attained the knowledge that was in them, nobody would be able to take it away from us.

The Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education was about inequality in the system - as there is now. We have to apply new principles to guarantee that all children, starting at the very earliest stages of life, will have the kind of education that will allow them to function in our society, which is not as strong as it ought to be because so many of our people are left behind. We're more of a class-structured society than we've ever been. We're leaving more and more people at the bottom, and they will never be lifted up without the key that opens the door of opportunity: an education.

Reluctant Reformers

Let me make it clear from the beginning: It is not my intention to destroy public education. It is my intention to do all within my power to assure that the monolith into which we put billions of dollars annually has a desire to reform in ways that guarantee an education to every child. It is imperative that we have a public education system, but that system needs competition if we are serious about educating every child in America.

I am tired of being promised reforms that never happen. Reform will not come as long as those who have no competition continue to receive resources without ever having to be fully acountable for them - or for the products of our public schools. As long as raising salaries and rehabilitating buildings are the highest items on their agenda, the reality is that they have not focused enough on children.

It is time to invest in children in meaningful ways, as opposed to treating them as if they represent nothing but names to be sent to the state in exchange for the dollars that perpetuate the system. Those dollars often get caught up in the bureaucracy and never make their way to the places where they have the greatest impact on our children.

We have allowed editorialists to deny the fact that public education is failing. Politicians refuse to take strong positions even though schools in their districts may be failing - and in too many instances they are silent because they get financial support from the teacher unions. They are unable to speak out on the most critical issue in America: the investment that we make in a child's education.

When I spoke to the American Federation of Teachers, I felt like Daniel going into the lions' den. AFT president Sandra Feldman said to me before I got up to speak, "I don't understand why you are on the other side of this issue."

"If every child in America got the same quality of education, I would not be on the other side," I said. "And furthermore, I'm not on the other side. I'm trying to help you to be better. By going all the way out to the most radical of the choices - vouchers - I'm giving you a nice soft landing: you can adopt charter schools. If you would just do that, we will have brought about the kind of reform that you keep talking about."

Dumbing Education Down

I started my career as a social worker with Head Start. We tested children coming out of Head Start, and many of them were at the second and third grade level. Two years later those students were tested again. They were still at the second and third grade level; the system had no way of assimilating accelerated children and keeping them on track. Rather, the system pulled them back. It retarded them. The students who came out of Head Start got dumbed down to create a comfortable situation for the rest of the students.

I was dean of students and dean of the chapel at Boston University, and associate dean at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania before that. I discovered way back in 1970 when I went to Lincoln that many of our students, although they had been admitted to an institution of higher education, did not bring with them the level of skill and ability they needed. They were coming primarily from the public schools in Philadelphia, Washington, and New York. Those systems were not producing young people who could compete, so we had to set up remedial programs.

At Lincoln, we took a predominantly African American body of students, challenged them to understand what their weaknesses were, and worked with them so that by the time they graduated, they could go to Yale or Harvard or Boston University and do extremely well.

At Boston University, we were not able to challenge these same kinds of students in the same way. We set up remedial programs, and they suggested that there was something wrong with those of us who challenged them to get themselves together. I was called an Uncle Tom for telling them that they had certain deficiencies that we wanted to work with. They came in as pre-law and pre-med students, and several years later they were telling me they were switching into the college of liberal arts. Then they went into the metropolitan evening college, and then they dropped out, and then they disappeared.

There must be standards, and those standards must be met. No excuses, no alibis. Color, ethnicity, race - they are not rationalizations for lowering standards. If students are going to be required to take the Stanford Binet and Iowa and California tests, then we must prepare them to take those tests. If students are expected to take the standard college entrance exams, they can't do it with Ebonics; they have to understand the language with which the rest of the world communicates.

Ebonics may be good on the street corner. It may be good for communicating to the hip-hop generation. I tell kids to speak that language from five in the evening until nine in the morning, but when you get to the classroom, understand that there is a language that you must learn to communicate with there. If you don't, you will not only not pass the standardized tests, you will not pass the test that most civil service jobs require. You'll put yourself out of the loop even before you have an opportunity to compete.

I challenge white liberals especially, who think they are doing young people a favor by letting them get away with things they wouldn't let their own children get away with, to undertand that they don't do us any favors. That will paralyze us from being able to be competitive. Everybody ought to be competitive.

Choice for Rich and Poor

When I talk about school choice, many people around the country, particularly people who share my ethnicity, say to me over and over again that the public school system has evolved to the point where the majority of African American people feel that they have gotten an equal education. No matter how much I reflect on this, I still come out at the same point: there are too many young people in this country, particularly in urban communities, who do not have access to the kind of education that will allow them to be competitive in our society.

We have an obligation to assure that every child has access to a good education. We cannot afford to abandon the school choice movement regardless of how much the opposition suggests that it is a means of destroying the public education system. Nor can we afford to wait until students get to higher education to begin to talk about choice. I don't understand the people who tell me that we cannot deal with choice because of the Constitution. Tell me what sense it makes.

We have choice at higher educational levels. You can take your Pell grant to yeshiva, you can take it to Notre Dame, you can take it wherever you wish. Why can't we apply the same principle at the stages that lead to higher education? Why is it unconstitutional for kindergartners and constitutional once they graduate from high school? It makes no sense to me. Educational dollars are being spent by the government; what difference does it make whether you start choice at first grade or the first year of college?

How dare legislators who can afford to send their children to any school they choose pontificate against school choice? If they can choose for their children, then everybody ought to have the opportunity to choose. Charter schools are important. Other choice programs are important. We must make sure that these programs become available to every child.

Would we do better to put more money into public education rather than to support school choice? Absolutely not. If in my community you get $10,000 to educate a child and I pay $3,400 to educate a child in my school and you cannot educate the children, nor can you keep schools open, nor can you keep them from the bottom of the Board of Education's list of nonperforming schools, it is not just a matter of dollars. It is a matter of will. It is a matter of expectations. If you expect nothing of our children, you will get nothing in return.

We want to assure that all children in America can stand up and say they have the kind of education that they can take to the marketplace, that they have something to offer society. Once the door opens, it becomes each child's responsibility to demonstrate the tools for success. We must create competitive people, and that's why we need choice.

If You Can't Be Michael Jordan . . .

When I was working on my doctorate, I was a member of the House of Representatives and pastor of a church. My children asked me, "Daddy, why are you going back to get another degree? You're in Congress. You have one of the largest churches in New York City. You really don't need another degree. Why are you doing it?"

"I'm doing it for you," I said. "I want you to understand that one of the most valuable things you can have is a good education."

"But, Daddy, you don't really need it. It's not going to get you any more money. You aren't going after another job, are you?"

"No, I'm not going after another job. My job is to raise you and demonstrate to you that even if you can't be Michael Jordan, you can always pursue something that you know can help you. It may translate into dollars in your pocket, but it gives you self-esteem and the knowledge of accomplishment."

Let me tell you how I got my doctorate. I flew back to New York every night from Washington, D.C., slept for two hours, got up, worked on my dissertation all night - in longhand, because I thought it was sissy to take typing in high school - and took the first shuttle back to Washington in the morning. I did that because education is important. All of us can't run, all of us can't dunk balls, all of us can't hit baseballs. Some of us have to demonstrate to the world that it is all right to be smart. If you realize what education means in the society we live in, you do not allow yourself to be separated from it.

I close by taking you to the Book of Joshua.

Joshua said to a group of people who stood before him, "You are the last tribe. I have already divided the rest of the land among the other people. I am going to give you the wooded land in the mountains."

And they said. "But we are the children of Joseph. If you understood our heritage, our genealogy, our history, you would not send us up there."

And Joshua said, "That is the land that the Lord has told me to give to you."

And they said, "We are the children of Joseph, the grandchildren of Jacob, whose name was changed from Jacob to Israel. We are the great-grandchildren of Isaac and the great-great grandchildren of Abraham, who was promised by God that his seed would be blessed. How dare you send us up to the wooded country? We are a great people."

And Joshua said, "If you are really a great people, go up to the wooded country. There is no challenge that is too hard for God."

I say to you that the teacher unions will fight us, and the bureaucrats will fight us, but let us join hands and go to the wooded country. It is time for all of us to come together to create a mighty army and march throughout the land declaring that the system must change. If those who are responsible for educating our children are not prepared for change, then we must assume the responsibility ourselves. Let's fight together to make education a reality for every child in this land.