Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the Nation’s “What’s Next for Public Education discussion, a collaboration with the New School featuring AFT President Randi Weingarten, NYU Professor Pedro Noguera, The Marshall Project journalist and author Dana Goldstein, and well-known parent activist Zakiyah Ansari, moderated by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes with a few words from NYC Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña. Overall, I thought it was a good primer for some of the issues facing education. For those who hadn’t heard these issues from these perspectives, it might have been good to hear.

This piece isn’t about the panel per se because I’m sure you’ll read plenty of that out there.

My initial critique of the panel is that it would have been nice if there was a current teacher or student on the panel on there. As much as I got love for my colleagues on there, I also think it might have added an interesting dimension to have one of us (didn’t have to be me) up there. Even so, I felt a sense of elation getting an invite. Kenzo Shibata name dropped my book in their education issue and the organizer for the event invited me personally. Compelling.

As I listened to the panelists, I had written a question on an index card that went something along the lines of “In light of recent events like Ferguson, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride and the statistics showing the ever-widening gap between a predominantly white teaching staff and a non-white student body, what should be the teachers’ union position on racial and social justice?” I thought it was a fair question. The controversy surrounding the teachers who wore the NYPD t-shirts on the first day of school needs serious re-examining.

Then again, so does school funding and equity. So does integration and what it actually means to have it on a substantive level. So does teacher pay and the perceptions of educators in our profession. So do the living conditions of the children we teach. So does the school-to-prison pipeline and how, if we’re not fighting against it in some way, we’re complicit in its perpetuation.

All these problems (and many more) deserve more solutions. With all the brainpower on the stage and in the audience, I like to think that we couldn’t, for once, come up with more solutions than “no.” I often fear that people who talk about education fall into two big loud camps: the ones with a business-centric plan that looks thorough from a birds’ eye view and the ones shouting no and hoping the general public sees why. A progressive strategy or approach ought to have a platform of its own, chock full of yeses and amens about what schooling ought to look like.

After many years of coming out of speeches feeling validated for my outrage, I for once wanted to walk out of a panel feeling like public education will be OK in some form.

It’s been about time we come up with a strategy, too. Many people want to win a debate, not talk to the people most affected by detrimental education reform policies. Too many people forget that the issues we think have universal appeal, like anti-testing, charter schools, and the Common Core might have implications across racial, gender, and class lines and we’re in serious need of people who can weave through those nuances. (Here’s where I’d ask us to follow the lead of Deborah Meier or Lisa Delpit here, but perhaps I’m asking too much.)

As always, my critiques come from a place of learning. I just can’t help but wonder what a broad coalition of folks creating and building might look like. Putting a student or teacher on the panel as a proxy for re-framing the current vision of expert might have worked on some level. Also, Dana Goldstein’s Teacher Wars and Pedro’s voluminous works have solutions galore. At some point, we need to build coalition around those issues, something that The Nation and The New School can build on.

Otherwise, I’ll just get back to lesson-planning, imperfectly and with a whole nation on our collective shoulders.