Over the past few months, the term “Sputnik moment” has been tossed around like rag dolls when it comes to the point where most Americans finally realize that the state of public education is abysmal. But we have known this and the need for reform for the past decade — including through pieces such as my 2005 series on Indiana’s (and America’s) dropout crisis.

As I make clear in this piece, which was adapted from the speech I gave in December at the State of Black CT Alliance’s Building Blocks of Educational Excellence Event, it’s time to stop looking for Sputnik moments and get to work on overhauling the systemic problems within American public education.

Every time I think about why I am so passionate about school reform, I think about my long-departed grandmother. Back in the middle of the Great Depression, when she entered 4th-grade in Mineola, New York, she could not read. It wasn’t that my Nanna and my great-grandfather didn’t try to give her the very best. They did. But they could not read either. My great-grandparents signed their names with “X” (when they could barely spell it) to their dying days.

Grandma managed to get the attention of a teacher who realized her genius. She worked with my grandmother on reading until she got to grade level – and beyond. Thanks to this highly-qualified teacher who cared for each of the kids in her class, my grandmother went on to college, to a successful life and to form a family. From her, came my mom and me, going places that she could only dream of.

My grandma, the daughter of a maid and a porter, got lucky. That’s not the way it should have been. But in my grandmother’s time, education wasn’t important to earning a wage. We didn’t appreciate the importance of high-quality teachers, see the damage that poor-quality teaching can do to our kids, and have ways to give our kids a high-quality education.

Today, we know that in an increasingly global economy, education is critical to success and to survival. We have the tools available to know how well kids are performing, tools for getting kids up to speed and on the path to high achievement. But the bad news is that it is as haphazard for a child to get a high-quality education now as it was 78 years ago.

We know that if a child is poor and white, or poor and black, or poor and Latino, that child has few chances of being taught by a high-quality teacher. They are being robbed of the opportunity to have ambitions, much less transform them into reality.

We know that just one out of every two of Connecticut’s black and Latino 4th-graders read Below Basic proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That’s one out of two boys and girls unable to read or comprehend simple sentences in their textbooks.

We know that just one in every 100 black and Latino high school seniors read at Advanced levels of proficiency – the critical reading comprehension skills that they will need for success as entrepreneurs, as executives, and as civic leaders.

We know that there our young men in Connecticut – no matter their race, ethnicity or economic status– are trailing their female peers in school in reading and increasingly, even in math. They won’t be able to get high-paying blue-collar jobs because they lack the skills for work.

And we know where they will go when they cannot succeed in school. They will fall into prison, drown in poverty and be denied the opportunities to happiness that they deserve.

This angers me, this offends me. It should madden and disgust you too. If you don’t think it’s a tragedy, a travesty and a crying shame, then you are not human.

I think about the young men I have tutored in reading this past year – especially a fifth-grader out of Harriet Tubman High School in D.C. He is intelligent, yet raw. He is handful, but one of the kindest young men you’ll ever meet.

He’s so much like every other young man his age: Ruffian and Renaissance Man all at once. He, and so many like him are afterthoughts for adults concerned about keeping tenure and staying in classrooms long past their prime.

Happily, this kid can read at grade level. But I fear for him and kids like him. It’s why I’m going back to Tubman in 2011: To help young men like him; to nurture our young geniuses who are often sent off to special ed ghettos and worse.

Our American public education system eats up young men like him like breakfast and spits them out into the streets. It’s a systemic problem. It will take an army of parents and people from all walks of life outside of education to help navigate young men like him to great, caring teachers and opportunities to learn.

There’s a whole lot of talk about Sputnik moments, Waits for Superman and gut check times. But for our young men and women, the moment is now. They get only one chance to get ready for the future – and we only get this time, right now, to help them make their ambitions real. And this is the time for America and Connecticut to make this real: For them, for us and for our nation’s future.

We need a revolution, not an evolution, in American public education. And it is as true in Hartford, in Bridgeport and in Stamford as it is in Detroit, in Orange County and in little Liberty, New York.

Every time I think about why I am so passionate about school reform, I think about my long-departed grandmother. Back in the middle of the Great Depression, when she entered 4th-grade in Mineola, New York, she could not read. It wasn’t that my Nanna and my great-grandfather didn’t try to give her the very best. They did. But they could not read either. My great-grandparents signed their names with “X” (when they could barely spell it) to their dying days.

Grandma managed to get the attention of a teacher who realized her genius. She worked with my grandmother on reading until she got to grade level – and beyond. Thanks to this highly-qualified teacher who cared for each of the kids in her class, my grandmother went on to college, to a successful life and to form a family. From her, came my mom and me, going places that she could only dream of.

My grandma, the daughter of a maid and a porter, got lucky. That’s not the way it should have been. But in my grandmother’s time, education wasn’t important to earning a wage. We didn’t appreciate the importance of high-quality teachers, see the damage that poor-quality teaching can do to our kids, and have ways to give our kids a high-quality education.

Today, we know that in an increasingly global economy, education is critical to success and to survival. We have the tools available to know how well kids are performing, tools for getting kids up to speed and on the path to high achievement. But the bad news is that it is as haphazard for a child to get a high-quality education now as it was 78 years ago.

We know that if a child is poor and white, or poor and black, or poor and Latino, that child has few chances of being taught by a high-quality teacher. They are being robbed of the opportunity to have ambitions, much less transform them into reality.

We know that just one out of every two of Connecticut’s black and Latino 4th-graders read Below Basic proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That’s one out of two boys and girls unable to read or comprehend simple sentences in their textbooks.

We know that just one in every 100 black and Latino high school seniors read at Advanced levels of proficiency – the critical reading comprehension skills that they will need for success as entrepreneurs, as executives, and as civic leaders.

We know that there our young men in Connecticut – no matter their race, ethnicity or economic status– are trailing their female peers in school in reading and increasingly, even in math. They won’t be able to get high-paying blue-collar jobs because they lack the skills for work.

And we know where they will go when they cannot succeed in school. They will fall into prison, drown in poverty and be denied the opportunities to happiness that they deserve.

This angers me, this offends me. It should madden and disgust you too. If you don’t think it’s a tragedy, a travesty and a crying shame, then you are not human.

I think about the young men I have tutored in reading this past year – especially a fifth-grader out of Harriet Tubman High School in D.C. He is intelligent, yet raw. He is handful, but one of the kindest young men you’ll ever meet.

He’s so much like every other young man his age: Ruffian and Renaissance Man all at once. He, and so many like him are afterthoughts for adults concerned about keeping tenure and staying in classrooms long past their prime.

Happily, this kid can read at grade level. But I fear for him and kids like him. It’s why I’m going back to Tubman in 2011: To help young men like him; to nurture our young geniuses who are often sent off to special ed ghettos and worse.

Our American public education system eats up young men like him like breakfast and spits them out into the streets. It’s a systemic problem. It will take an army of parents and people from all walks of life outside of education to help navigate young men like him to great, caring teachers and opportunities to learn.

There’s a whole lot of talk about Sputnik moments, Waits for Superman and gut check times. But for our young men and women, the moment is now. They get only one chance to get ready for the future – and we only get this time, right now, to help them make their ambitions real. And this is the time for America and Connecticut to make this real: For them, for us and for our nation’s future.

We need a revolution, not an evolution, in American public education. And it is as true in Hartford, in Bridgeport and in Stamford as it is in Detroit, in Orange County and in little Liberty, New York. Economically, America and Connecticut cannot survive if we do not transform education for the better.

The revolution has already begun this year in Connecticut with the new Parent Trigger law that has been passed. Our speakers tonight stand with our parents and our communities ready to demand better and take action. Let’s take the energy that is coming out of this room tonight and transform education for our kids.

Our kids deserve better. We owe them nothing less.