One of the unfortunate side effects of the 2016 national election is that lying has become distressingly normal in public debate today. Media outlets have tracked thousands of lies coming from the president and the White House.

Californians must reject deceitful politics, especially in the all-important race for state superintendent of public instruction. The place to begin is with the truth about Golden State students.

Today, roughly 3 million students in California’s public schools aren’t reading and writing at grade level. The state’s fourth-graders rank 45th in math, 43rd in reading and last in the nation in science. California eighth-graders are not doing much better. And only a third of California’s black and Latino students graduate high school meeting state requirements for college.

The state superintendent’s race features politician Tony Thurmond against career educator Marshall Tuck. Both are Democrats but it’s clear to me who knows more about closing achievement gaps and preparing kids for college. It’s clear to me who will fight for kids and who will protect the status quo.

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Tuck has led two large public school systems in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, serving students who had significant growth and achievement. He helped open 10 new public schools in Inglewood, South LA and East LA, and eight have since been recognized as among the top high schools in America by U.S. News & World Report.

As the founding CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Tuck significantly improved educational outcomes at 15 struggling elementary, middle and high schools that served approximately 15,000 students. Their “Parent College” became a statewide model for getting parents more involved in their kids’ education.

He made an impact in neighborhoods where less than one in 10 adults over the age of 24 had completed a four-year degree. He improved proficiency in both math and English, and graduation rates at the schools he led have increased from 36 percent to 81 percent.

Thurmond has spent the last 14 years grinding in a bureaucracy too often designed to meet the needs of adults rather than students. Not surprisingly, he’s the preferred candidate of the lobbyists and insiders in Sacramento who want to shift power away from parents and give it back to the bureaucracy.

Thurmond is not offering bold ideas for addressing California’s dismal record when it comes to educating the state’s 1.3 million English Language Learners, only 9 percent of whom graduate college-ready. He’s not trying to build bridges between the state’s 1,200 public charter schools and 10,000 public district schools. Instead he is feeding the false argument that education is a zero-sum game where everyone loses.

It’s also no surprise that he and his allies are putting out misinformation about Tuck because he can’t beat him with the truth. They can’t attack Tuck’s record in improving education for children, so they must make things up. For example, it is a lie when they suggest that Tuck is aligned with Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos. And it is exactly these types of political games that rob voters of the opportunity to consider the real issues at stake for kids.

Thankfully, voters aren’t buying it. Instead they are excited by Tuck’s educational goals, which are the same ones I fought for as President Obama’s education secretary for seven years: High-quality public schools that serve all children; real accountability that challenges all schools to get better; engaged and empowered parents setting the educational agenda; hard-working, dedicated teachers and principals with the autonomy and support they need to be effective in the classroom.

Bureaucrats and politicians have been running California’s schools for decades and they have little to show for it. It’s time to put the power back in the hands of teachers, parents and students because every single kid deserves a shot at a good life. It’s time we listen to them and work for them.

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Opinion: It’s climate change that keeps this Bay Area doctor up at night These are your schools and your kids and it’s their future on the line. Californians don’t need a conversation about politics driven by people who oppose real change to improve our public schools. Californians need and deserve a conversation about how to put kids first and do right by them.

Arne Duncan was the U.S. secretary of education from 2009 through December 2015 under President Barack Obama. He is a managing partner of Palo Alto-based Emerson Collective.