By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / April 9, 2022
In 2014, the first Network for Public Education (NPE) Conference was held at Austin, Texas. My first conference was the following year in Chicago. That was the year after the late Karen Lewis and the Chicago teachers union decided enough is enough and stood strong against a host of privatizers and education profiteers.
Their powerful teachers’ union victory sent ripples of hope to educators across America. That year, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Mercedes Schneider, Peter Greene, Jennifer Berkshire, Jose Vilson, Jan Resseger, Steven Singer and many other pro-public education activists started dominating social media.
NPE Chicago was held in the historic Drake hotel just up the street from Lake Michigan. When walking into the lobby, I was greeted by Anthony Cody the co-founder of NPE. Steve Singer from Pennsylvania and T.C. Weber from Tennessee arrived just after I did. During the conference, it seemed I met all of the leading education activists in America.
Particularly memorable was lunch the following day. I met Annie Tan for the first time in the hallway heading to lunch and she said let’s get a seat near the stage. So, I followed her to an upfront table. Turned out our table mates included Adell Cothorne the Noyes Elementary school principal famous for exposing Michelle Rhee’s DC cheating scandal. Jenifer Berkshire who had unmasked herself as the Edu-Shyster was also at the table. The Curmugducator, Peter Greene, and his wife were there as was well known education blogger and author Jose Vilson.
It strangely turned out that Greene, his wife, Vilson and I were all trombone players. Of course, everyone knows that trombone players are the coolest members of the band.
A highlight of NPE 2015 was the entertaining hour long presentation by Yong Zhao. He is an internationally decorated professor of education. Zhao had just published Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon.
His presentation focused on the harm caused by standards and testing. He also made fun of the concept of being college ready and the recently broached kindergarten readiness. Zhou made the logical observation that it was schools that needed to be ready for children. He also shared what he wanted for his children was “out of my basement readiness.” Zhao claimed that on a recent trip to Los Angeles he met Kim Kardashian in an elevator. He observed that she clearly had “out of my basement readiness.”
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