The VIVA Project: What teachers told Duncan
More than 150 public school teachers from 27 states, seeking to get their voices heard by education policymakers in this let’s-bash-teachers era, collaborated to devise solutions to problems that most affect their profession. They wrote their conclusions in a paper called "Voices From the Classroom," and then, in a town where such reports are constantly released and then forgotten, they got to do something unusual: present them to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The effort is called the VIVA Project -- Voices, Ideas, Vision, Action -- which was created to give classroom teachers a chance to share ideas and take a role in making state and national policy decisions involving public schools. The project's aim is to connect teachers with public officials so that the latter can better understand what reallly goes on in classrooms. The project was launched last fall with an on-line discussion that led to the report that
