With a focus on harnessing the power of leadership to improve the quality of public education, school administrators from across the nation converged on the San Diego Convention Center Feb. 23-26 for the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) 2006 National Conference on Education.

In an era when federal education spending threatens to dip for the first time in more than a decade and school leaders increasingly find themselves under fire for the academic deficiencies of their students, AASA President David Gee called on administrators to stand firm in their commitment to public education and work together to "build bridges" that will help prepare students for the evolving challenges of life in the 21st century.

Calling the nation's children "our most important resource," Gee said it's time for school administrators everywhere to "stand up for public education"--and themselves.

Though being an advocate for public education isn't easy, especially in the face of proposed budget cuts, Gee--along with a handful of other speakers throughout the weekend--said a shift in thinking, paired with the effective integration of new tools for teaching and learning, should go a long way to help the nation's schools stay competitive in a new global economy.

When he began his term as AASA president a little more than a year ago, Gee said, he looked forward to heading to Washington to work with national leaders and policy makers to bolster the quality of education in the nation's public schools.

What he encountered instead was resistance.

Lashing out at lawmakers on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, Gee said school administrators have become the scapegoats for a floundering school system--one where educators have been forced, under sweeping reforms such as the federal No Child Left Behind Act, to do more with less.

"I've come to learn that cooperation and teamwork [are] simply not the case [in Washington]," he said of his experience working with lawmakers. "It's either their way or the highway. I'm tired of [politicians] quoting inaccurate details ... and distorting the facts. And I'm irate that my friends and colleagues are subject to this sort of abuse."

Taking up a theme that was reiterated throughout the weekend, Gee accused politicians of unfairly blaming school administrators for the troubles of the nation's schoolchildren while refusing to provide the funding necessary to meet the demands of an education system anchored in accountability and fairness.

School leaders have but one choice, he said--to overcome.

Debunking the 'myths'

But at a time when world figures from Bill Gates to President Bush have expressed concerns about the state of American education, suggesting that a trend of substandard student performance eventually might strip the United States of its status as a world economic power, some in education have begun to question the accuracy and pessimism of such forecasts.