Take Back the Narrative

While at the 2014 National Conference on Education I heard a recurring theme of the need to push back against efforts to privatize education.  The message was not a surprising one.  For some time public education has been the whipping boy of everything wrong in society and seems to have intensified recently.

Can we fight back and what will it take?  I believe we can, but it will take a concerted effort by all of us who support public education. 

If we examine the reform movement we now see what appears to be a coordinated social media effort to recycle the same stories over and over.  Take a look at their Twitter accounts.  These folks follow each other and retweet "think tank" releases and news stories.  If something is happening in one state it will make its way across the nation via Twitter.

That isn't normally the case with great news in public education. 

Surveys on the support of public education routinely show strong support for local schools.  That support drops when asked about the nation's schools.  That is a perception we can, and must, change.  It's time we started showing support for other schools across the country.  The media isn't going to do it.  Only we can.

Let's commit to passing along the great things going on in schools across the country and take back the narrative about public education.