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As has been said over and over again, the recent barrage of education media has been narrowly focused and agenda driven. It has been one shot after another at teachers unions (despite the work they continuously do in driving reform efforts from Maryland to California) and one plug after another for charter schools (without mention of the fact that evidence on charters is mixed at best).

To me, a sharp illustration of the monotony of the debate came with Monica Groves, a former teacher turned dean at an Atlanta charter school, who participated in the closing panel at Education Nation. She commented:

The ... piece that I found was often missing from the conversation was, once we get highly qualified teachers in the door, what are we doing as a nation to invest and prioritize teacher development for teachers who are already in the classroom. Because as many educators agree, getting into the classroom is only the first step in the journey. Staying there, and becoming increasingly more effective is one of the bigger challenges. So my question is what are we going to do on a national level to prioritize professional development so it's not just an administrator's initiative or a district's initiative to develop teachers on an ongoing basis once they're in the classroom?

As the recent media efforts seem to, she could have championed the importance of charters or of disempowering teachers unions, two things that when looking at her choice in workplace, stereotype would suggest she supports (I don't know her position on these matters). Instead, she called attention to professional learning. As well she should. High-quality professional development has been shown time and time again to have a positive impact on student achievement. Yet as Learning Forward's Tracy Crow points out, despite widespread recognition of the importance of professional learning and a number of speakers at Education Nation—including the President—mentioning professional development as an element necessary to improvement, “the centrality of professional development’s importance didn’t ring as loud as other ideas.”

But I think just fact that Groves called attention to that issue is promising. It shows that there is common ground. And it is evidence that those in the trenches, regardless of their "side" in the debate portrayed by the media, recognize the limitations of the current rhetoric. A wide number of stakeholders are interested in shifting conversations towards strategies that could actually improve the state of public education for all, not just for some.