Seventh Annual Quality Education Conference
Looks to “Build on Success”
Bringing together over 150 litigators, advocates, and
organizers from 33 states and the District of Columbia,
the Seventh Annual Quality Education Conference, organized
by the National Access Network and co-sponsored by the
Public Education Network, the Rural School and Community
Trust, and the Education Law Center, examined many of
the most critical issues facing school finance.
The conference’s theme, “Building On Success,”
referred to the many successes that education advocates
have had in recent years – from victories in major
school funding litigations to successful grassroots
advocacy campaigns to improve public schools. The major
question for education advocates in many states is now
how to build upon these successes and how to continue
them into the future.
Rachel Tompkins, President of the
Rural School and Community Trust, welcomed participants
to the conference, highlighting three issues that she
sees as critical to future stages of education funding
reform: taxes, which are necessary to raise revenue
but tend to inspire public opposition; the court of
public opinion, without which no effort in courts of
law can be fully successful; and federal education policy,
which plays an important and growing role in determining
and complementing state policy.
Next, Michael Rebell, the Executive Director of Access,
in his address, “Building toward Continued
Long-term Success,” stressed several
themes that conference participants would hear over
the following two days: the need for a strong national
movement for quality education that has a strong public
voice, the need to build on the successes of the previous
decades, the importance of fending off challenges from
opponents of adequate resources, and the need for strong
public engagement in the area of school finance reform,
particularly in order to make sure that additional education
funding is spent well (See related story: "Speakers
at Seventh Annual Quality Education Conference Discuss
the Future of the Quality Education Movement").
The morning concluded with the traditional Round-up
from the States, led by National Access Network
managing director Molly A. Hunter. A representative
from each of 30 states and the District of Columbia
shared the main events in his or her state the past
year. This session is consistently rated as among the
most popular each year, as it quickly gives advocates
from each state the national perspective in the movement
for quality education.
Over lunch, participants heard from recently retired
New York Court of Appeals Judge George Bundy
Smith in the Quality Education Conference’s
annual “A View from the Bench” address.
Judge Smith was on the bench that heard the Campaign
for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York lawsuit
twice in New York’s highest court. Judge Smith
related the tale of the CFE lawsuit, and also
discussed the influence of politics in court decisions.
Not only are judicial decisions not immune from politics,
but the politicians making appointments also determine
what judges will be on the bench to decide cases. This
last point was underscored by a moving personal tale
from Judge Smith about Governor Pataki’s refusal
to reappoint him when his term on the Court of Appeals
expired in 2006.
Thursday afternoon offered the first set of concurrent
sessions, where participants attended one four sessions
focused on particular issues. Over the two days of the
conference, participants had the opportunity choose
from 11 different breakout sessions, focusing on everything
from educational issues for English learners to how
to organize successful advocacy campaigns. More about
the concurrent sessions will appear in our next newsletter.
Jack Jennings, President and CEO of
the Center on Education Policy, discussed a recent CEP
report that looked at states’ progress in increasing
student achievement since No Child Left Behind Act was
signed into law in 2002. While student test scores have
increased in some states since 2002, Jennings did caution
against drawing too many conclusions from the data,
as the validity of standardized test scores as a measure
of student achievement has been questioned, some states
have lessened the difficulty of the tests, and the study
was not intended to look at issues of causation.
The final session on Thursday was a plenary session
on communications strategies, entitled “Courting
Success: How to Communicate Clearly in a World of Spin.”
Moderated by former Governor Bob Wise of West Virginia,
the panel stressed the importance of communications
to the success of advocacy campaigns. Linda Martin,
Executive Director of Challenge West Virginia, spoke
about how her organization raised a successful public
opposition to additional school consolidation in West
Virginia. Tom Decker, Director of School Finance and
Organization for the North Dakota Department of Public
Instruction, talked about the organized communications
blitz in opposition to education funding, coming from
conservative foundations and think tanks. Finally, David
Sassoon, an independent communications consultant that
does work with the Access Network, talked about the
implications of the right-wing pushback against increasing
school funding and what we should do about it. For the
second year, Sassoon stressed the importance of online
strategies such as blogs as a way to put out our message
and connect with other advocates on a daily basis (See
related story: "Speakers
at Seventh Annual Quality Education Conference Discuss
the Future of the Quality Education Movement")..
Friday, the second day of the conference, opened with
a welcome from Wendy Puriefoy, President
of the Public Education Network. Puriefoy stressed the
idea that public education must be thought of as a “public
resource that must be preserved by the public,”
not as a private good that simply receives public funding.
Public education must stay public, but for this to work
the public must be involved. In many ways, Puriefoy
said, “American is still making a transition from
a slave nation to a free nation.” Human potential
is limitless, she declared, but we have and old infrastructure
based on putting limitations on people, and we must
unlock these limitations for education reform to be
successful.
Following Puriefoy’s welcome was the Keynote
Address, delivered by Congressman Charles Rangel
(D-NY), Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.
The Congressman, in a well-received oration, stressed
the importance of education to ensuring the country’s
economic well-being and national security. In addition,
Congressman Rangel called for a strong national movement
around public education. We can no longer afford to
treat education as a local issue, he said, and everybody
– the general public as well as the private sector
– need to partner in order to press Congress and
the states for national education reform. Proclaiming
“kids can’t fight for themselves,”
the Congressman told the audience it was up to every
one of them to change the public’s attitude toward
public education and to get the public mobilized (see
related story: "Congressman
Rangel Calls for a National “Crusade” for
Education").
The Seventh Annual Quality Education Conference, called
the “best conference so far,” by some participants,
was a resounding success, with participants noting how
helpful it was to hear from people from all over the
country, and from all around the education community,
including grassroots organizers, policy-oriented advocates,
and litigators. Read more about the conference in our
other stories in this newsletter:
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