Speakers at Seventh Annual Quality Education Conference Discuss the Future of the Quality Education Movement

A major theme in this year’s Quality Education Conference was the need for a strong national movement for quality education. Advocates for quality education must work together, speak in a unified voice, and get citizens from across the country engaged in education reform.

Michael Rebell, the Executive Director of the National Access Network, touched on this theme in his opening address, Building toward Continued Long-term Success. Rebell commented on how the Quality Education Conference, which started years ago as a small meeting of litigators, had expanded to involve over 150 people from over 30 states. In the past two decades, he said, there has been an “astounding rate of success” in “adequacy” litigations, but the missions and the successes of the conference participants began long before and will end long after any litigation. States that have had litigation, Rebell explained, have seen educational expenditures and equity improve, regardless of the outcome of the case. This is because success is tied to organizing and political action, with litigation as only one piece in a larger puzzle.

Despite the successes of the movement thus far, he said, “we can’t expect smooth sailing anymore.” The national movement for quality education and increased education funding are now on the radar of right-wing organizations that oppose public education. These organizations have put forth a substantial communications blitz in the past year, ranging from papers to books to op-eds in the Wall Street Journal. It is not a coincidence, Rebell said, that this blitz coincided with the largest number of negative court decisions in recent years, with six of eleven court decisions in the past twelve months being against plaintiffs.

Rebell also addressed the roles of the public and the different branches of government as advocates move forward. Public support and pressure on elected officials is, as he described, a critical part of winning additional funding for the students who need it most. However, the fight for adequate funding is a continuous one; as state legislatures tart to increase school funding – as they have in many states – the issue of making sure the money is spent well needs to move to the front of policy discussions. Finally, as we get into the “second generation” of adequacy cases, where plaintiffs are returning to court in states that have already had successful adequacy litigation, the question of the role of the courts in school funding becomes more prominent, and this is one area where conservative think tanks and press continue to attack. While going to the judicial branch is often required, courts alone cannot be responsible for reform. “The courts have an important role to play, but not in isolation,” Rebell said. “We need a better dialogue among the branches as we look for long-term solutions.”

Communications: How to Respond

Many of Rebell’s points – including the pushback from the right, the need for public engagement, and the importance about getting our message out on issues such as the role of the courts – were picked up later that day at the plenary session on communications, Courting Success: How to Communicate Clearly in a World of Spin. The panel, moderated by former Governor of West Virginia Bob Wise, now president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, stressed the importance of communications issues to successful advocacy.

Linda Martin, Executive Director of Challenge West Virginia, started the discussion by explaining how change can result from a successful communications strategy. Martin described how her organization succeeded in raising public opposition to additional school consolidation in West Virginia by reframing the issue: “We didn’t call ourselves ‘anti’ anything,” Martin explained. “We called ourselves ‘pro-small schools’ people,” focusing on the messages of long bus rides for young childrent, higher dropout rates, and harm to communities that result from consolidation.

Martin also raised what many education advocates see as a critical issue in talking about public schools. We make a mistake, she said, when we talk about education only in economic terms. Education is, as the Public Education Network’s President, Wendy Puriefoy, would describe the next morning, a “public resource that must be preserved by the public.” When we talk about public education, Martin said, we must talk about the virtues of community, democracy, and social connection, all of which public schools bring to the table, and all of which have the power to energize and excite people.

Tom Decker, Director of School Finance and Organization for the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction talked about a conference convened in 2006 by Paul Peterson of the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance that was a wake up call about “adequacy” for education advocates on the right. The conference has resulted in substantial communications efforts, including two books attacking the quality education movement, one edited by Eric Hanushek and the other by Paul Peterson and Martin West. Though quality education advocates are fighting numerous state and local battles, they are running into a strong, well-organized, well-funded, and on-message opposition, Decker said.

Finally, David Sassoon, an independent communications consultant, tackled what he thinks are the problems facing the movement and what we can do in response. “We’re not organized around a national endgame,” Sassoon explained, “but the other side thinks [we] have one.” He explained that Peterson’s book ends by saying that the “adequacy movement” seeks to enshrine in federal law the language from favorable state court decisions, in order to create a federal right to education. While this may not be exactly what we want, Sassoon said, organizations on the right are responding to us as if it is. Sassoon also noted that the right’s fear of us means they believe we have the potential to organize and effect change on a national scale. If we act on that same belief, we can form a strong national movement.

One key to success, Sassoon said, is a new form of communications. In today’s media environment, using traditional communications techniques such as newspapers is slow and inefficient. A successful organization, Sassoon stated, must have a “Web 2.0” component, incorporating strategies such as blogs to “create our world,” put out our message daily, respond immediately to news and attacks from the opposition, and connect with other advocates on a daily basis. Blogs are some of the most popular sites on the internet, he said, and major media outlets now go to blogs to find information and commentary. For better or worse, Sassoon said, this is new landscape of communications, and we must be part of it.