We can and should make a big deal about the Costing-Out Study for public education. Last night members from the Denver consulting firm were at Ben Franklin High School to summarize the results of the study and field the many excellent questions people had. While it was notable that Mayor-Elect Nutter was there, and Rep. Tony Payton Jr. was there, and School District CEO Tom Brady stopped by, it was more notable to think about who wasn’t:

• Like our City Council.

• Like Rep. James Roebuck, Philadelphia legislator, who chairs the Education Committee in the House.

• Like anyone else from the Philadelphia delegation.

• Like the School Reform Commission, who stands to benefit, and who, as political appointments, need to figure out how to use their connections to sell this study.

• Like business and civic leaders and those who pay lip service to boosting public education.

Who wasn’t there highlights the long way we have to go, and the challenge that faces us around the costing out study. The challenge is not the inequity that exists. The challenge is whether we’re going to do something about it. The challenge is making something that everyone says they care about and is the so called key to fixing some of our deepest problems – poverty, crime, unemployment – into something they’re actually going to DO something about.

For advocates, the challenge is mapping out the plan – to not think that the study is the vehicle for justice and provides its own gas, but that this study is going to be pushed, pulled, dragged and hauled up a mountain like a reluctant donkey loaded down with tons of baggage (no offense to donkeys because I think they’ll be more compliant than some legislators might be).

We’ll have to find the strange bedfellows that politics creates, and we’ll have to figure out where our compromises are, what we’re willing to trade to get someplace.

What we can’t do though is assume this study speaks for itself, or, for that matter, that people are even ready to listen.