Change-because we should let a timeless cliche dictate how we vote.

I am proud to perform work that I feel makes a difference. It is an honor to feel this way. At the California Department of Education (CDE), our core purpose "is to lead and support the continuous improvement of student achievement, with a specific focus on closing achievement gaps. My boss commented on why this is important and I quote him now, because I could not have said it any better myself.

For years, educators have both lamented racial achievement gaps and debated their cause. Could curricular and programmatic changes close the gaps, or were those gaps the immutable result of economic disparities in our society? Higher standards and accountability brough improvements across the board and yet, even when holding for poverty, the gap in performance between African American and Latino students and their White and Asian peers persists. We know with certainty that children of all ethnicities are equally able to learn and achieve, so what are the factors holding some groups of students back? Family involvement, access to preschool, mobility, and other factors have been examined, and it is clear that all of these play a role.

A poll of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians released recently by New America Media should also make clear it is time for our education system to openly consider another factor when addressing the achievement gap. It's time to intentionally confront systemic, unconscious racial bias in our schools.

The poll found that only 30 percent of African Americans, 60 percent of Hispanics, and 43 percent of Asians believe strongly that every American has an equal opportunity to succeed. When it comes to fulfilling the "American dream," only 44 percent of African Americans believed that hard work would bring them success. Racial tension was viewed as a "very important problem in the U.S." by 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African Americans and 73 percent of Asians in the poll.

When addressing the achievement gap, our public school systems cannot afford to ignore these findings. It's time for educators of all races to move past the discomfort of talking about culture and race. If African American students believe that hard work will not result in success, what role do schools have in changing that belief? What role have schools had in creating it?

In Sacramento, when 4,000 educators gathered recently for a two-day summit I hosted on closing the achievement gap, we began a difficult dialogue abour race. Some educators felt defensive. Some non-Whites questioned my perspective as a White man. Most difficult were the accusations from those who believed that calling attention to cutural biases in our system was tantamount to blaming the cultural background of children in our schools. In fact, the culture of our system is the problem.

We are all, to some extent, trapped in the perspectives, assumptions, and experiences of our own culture. We form our beliefs, conduct our relationships, and build our institutions based on those perspectives, assumptions, and experiences. American institutions, including our public schools, continue to reflect the majority White culture, even when our institutions serve a population in which Whites are in the minority.

All of us must ask ourselves if we truly believe all children can learn, or whether our actions sometimes reflect historical, institutionalized habits of holding lower expectations for Black and Brown children. Such self-examination does not come easily, for me or anyone else. But until we understand our own cultural perspectives and biases, we can't begin to correct any institutional biases that might allow for lower expectations, culturally ineffective instruction for fewer resources at schools serving predominantly students of color.

The words, "institutional racism," when connected to an institution as central to our society as public schools naturally triggers deeply emotional feelings and responses. Yet institutional racism can merely be a reflection of the fact that well-meaning people haven't examined their assumption or considered the effect of race on others or themselves. Institutional racism occurs when a teacher unthinkingly holds lower expectations for an African American boy. It occurs when a Latino student is not only referred to supplemental instruction in English, but to "basic" math and science classes that will preclude college as an option in his future. It occurs at the school district level, when schools serving predominantly Latino or African American students offer fewer rigorous courses and fewer qualified teachers than at schools in the same district serving mostly White students. And it occurred at the state level in California before this year, when we held African American and Hispanic children to lower expectations when measuring the success of their schools.

We are in a global economy with an increasing need for a highly skilled, highly educated workforce. If we continue to accept less for and from the growing majority of our school children, we are dooming ourselvces to failure, morally, socially, and economically. It simply is in all of our interest to get this right. If we are ever going to change our practices-and results-we must talk about the role race plays in our society and in our schools.

-Jack O'Connell, State Superintendent of Public Instruction