ABSTRACT
Education research and the large public–private partnership contracts that go along with it are ostensibly aimed at improving teaching and learning. There is countless research in education that results from experiments conducted in schools that serve poor students of color. It is not surprising then that much of public education discourse and funding is centered on how to get poor children of color to achieve academic success. Education policy and practice operationalized through evaluations, standards-driven professional development and in-service training subjugates teachers to the same dominant narratives that have succeeded in drowning out the creative Spirit of teachers. Meliorism is a positive thing and necessary for our work for equity. It is akin to hope. The emphasis is that meliorism encourages intelligence to study the positive means of good and the obstructions to their realization. This is critical because it addresses how people can ensure that they do not fall into pseudo-meliorism or what Freire called, "false generosity".
