Fifteen years ago, a march in Washington DC planted the seeds of what would become the Network for Public Education. Independent journalist Jeff Bryant was there. For The Progressive, he tells the story of how it happened.
It was a sunny July day in Washington, D.C., the temperature was forecasted to hit 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and when I arrived at the Ellipse on the National Mall for the Save Our Schools march I realized I would need a hat. Among the vendors that lined Constitution Avenue, the least expensive hat I could find was a gaudy, red-white-and-blue affair with an embossed rendering of fireworks going off over the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. “Some hat,” Anne Thompson, my videographer for the day, said when she arrived.
Thompson had come highly recommended by Robert Borosage when I approached him about springing for the $1,000 it would cost to hire a videographer—this was in 2011. Borosage was a co-director of Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), a progressive policy think tank on K Street that let me blog on its site for free. “Think about it,” I said, as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and glanced at the floor. “Thousands of pissed-off teachers showing up for a demonstration in Washington, D.C.”
At the time, I was working on a project, partnered with the National Education Association, called “Starving America’s Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates Are Hurting Our Nation’s Students.” The project documented how state governments, following the Great Recession, cut funding for schools and rolled out efforts to privatize them with charter schools and voucher programs.
I had read multiple analyses by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) that found at least thirty-seven states responded to the economic downturn that started in 2007 and extended into 2009 by slashing their education budgets back to pre-recession levels. My Starving America’s Schools project would examine how the cuts caused districts to fire teachers, cancel art and music programs, close libraries and science labs, and cut extracurriculars like athletic programs, field trips, and drama performances.
Borosage had agreed to support my project even though he often seemed unsure what it was about. “What I think we need to do about schools,” he’d say, “is to focus on the basics.” I’d reply that not everyone agreed on what “the basics” were and that conservatives had made a “back to basics” slogan into a campaign to cut school curricula to bare bones.
“Education is also about values,” I’d say, “and relationships are key.” Then Borosage’s eyes would glaze over, and I’d realize I’d lost the conversation.
“People don’t know what to say about education,” Roger Hickey, the other CAF co-director, told me when I asked why Democratic candidates would have deep, articulate campaign platforms on complicated issues like health care, Wall Street, and the Middle East and then offer only vague bromides about teachers being “heroes” and every child being “career or college ready.”