On the Power of Education and Community Action

"There is no democratic culture without public education," Ernesto Cortés reflects in On the Power of Education and Community Action, his chapter in Latinos and the Nation's Future, edited by Henry G. Cisneros. Drawing on decades of IAF organizing across Texas and California—including Austin Interfaith's work at Zavala Elementary and One-LA's transformation of Harmony Elementary—Cortés argues that quality education depends not on standardized testing regimes but on rebuilding the networks of churches, unions, and community institutions, which are essential to democracy. Cortés lifts up institutions as capable of teaching the "habits of empathy, engagement, deliberation, negotiation, confrontation, and ultimately—compromise." He warns that as schools have grown isolated from these mediating institutions and fixated on high-stakes testing, they have lost both the human capital and political will needed to secure real investment in public education, particularly for the fast-growing Latino population poised to fill the labor gap left by retiring Baby Boomers.