Good news in Seattle: corporate education reform tide is pushed back!
Nov 25, 2011 4 Comments ›› leoniehaimsonThe following update is by Sue Peters, a founding member of Parents Across America and Parents Across America -Seattle, where over the course of the past year, grassroots organizing, community members and stakeholders have beaten down the forces of corporate reform several times, including in the latest school board elections. Amazingly, the State of Washington ...
Continue ReadingPSAT for 11-22-11: Give thanks for teachers
Nov 22, 2011 No Comments ›› pureparentsToday's Public Schools Action Tuesday (PSAT) action is an easy one since everyone's busy cooking and cleaning (and working) this week! To start Thanksgiving a little early, please give thanks for teachers. The Use Your Teacher Voice web site is a good place to start. You’ll hear from a variety of teachers like David, ...
Continue ReadingVictory in Wake Co. school board elections & defeat for Tea Party!
Nov 9, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimsonBelow see the account of last night's victory by Patty Williams of Great Schools in Wake Co. NC, an affiliate of Parents Across America. Conservative forces had taken control of the school board with the help of a group called Americans for Prosperity, which is funded in part by the Koch brothers; the conservative majority ...
Continue ReadingStotsky: yes, parents were excluded from developing the Common Core
Oct 29, 2011 1 Comment ›› leoniehaimsonSandra Stotsky was one of the authors of the Massachusetts learning standards in English Language Arts – widely thought to be the best in the nation – and was a member of the Common Core State Standards Initiative Validation Committee, though she has been critical of the final versions as being deficient. David Coleman and Jason Zimba, ...
Continue ReadingESEA moving in HELP committee
Oct 20, 2011 No Comments ›› pureparentsUpdate stories from Ed Week here and here on the status of ESEA in the Senate HELP committee, which has set a hearing on the proposal for November 8: …the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the committee, and Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., reached an agreement with Sen. Rand Paul, ...
Continue ReadingOne mom’s battle to ensure her son’s right to opt out of testing
Oct 20, 2011 2 Comments ›› leoniehaimsonThis is the story of Gretchen Herrera, and her battle with her son’s charter school, to allow him to opt out standardized testing. Her son Anthony attended the South Carolina Virtual Charter School, a branch of K12 Inc., one of the nation’s largest chains of for-profit charter schools. Here is a petition you can ...
Continue ReadingOur proposals on the Senate ESEA reauthorization bill
Oct 19, 2011 5 Comments ›› leoniehaimsonThis letter is available as a pdf here. A version of the letter which you can edit to fax to your Senators is here. A handy chart laying out which provisions in the bill we support and oppose is here. October 18, 2011 Re: Reauthorization of ESEA Dear Senator Harkin: Your proposed revisions to the Elementary and Secondary Education ...
Continue ReadingClass size crisis in Oregon: classes of forty or more
Oct 18, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimsonContinue ReadingPSAT: Tell your senator what you think about more charter schools
Oct 4, 2011 No Comments ›› pureparentsIt's Public Schools Action Tuesday (PSAT)! Illinois Senator Mark Kirk is asking his constituents to answer this question about charter schools: “Should Congress use its educational funds to support the expansion of Charter Schools?” In the post, Kirk declares that he “strongly supports charter schools.” The post is headlined with the incorrect statement that 9 of ...
Continue ReadingSchool reform’s magic bullet(s) by John Young
Sep 28, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimsonToday’s column by John Young is the perfect antidote to the wrong-headed notions propounded by nearly all the panelists over the last two days at NBC’s Education Nation. John was the opinion page editor of the Waco, Texas paper for many years, in George Bush’s backyard, till he recently moved back to his home state ...
Continue ReadingTestimony to the Oregon Legislature by our affiliate, SOS Oregon
Sep 24, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimsonOregon Save our Schools is the newest affiliate of Parents Across America; for more information, please contact Susan Barrett at barrettpdx@gmail.com TESTIMONY TO OREGON'S SENATE EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE & HOUSE HIGHER EDUCATION COMMITTEE On behalf of OREGON SAVE OUR SCHOOLS, an affiliate of Parents Across America Dear Committee Members: Members of our grassroots coalition have carefully ...
Continue ReadingMixed Feelings about CMS’s Broad Prize
Sep 21, 2011 2 Comments ›› pagrundyPAA co-founder Pamela Grundy has a son in fifth grade in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. So we finally won the Broad Prize. After two stints as a finalist, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools took home this year's prize, which the Charlotte Observer termed "the nation's top award for urban education." CMS leaders celebrated. Our mayor called the prize "a huge shot ...
Continue ReadingWarning to Michigan parents and teachers about John Covington
Sep 20, 2011 3 Comments ›› leoniehaimsonAn open message from a Kansas City teacher to the parents and teachers of Michigan about John Covington’s reign of terror when he was superintendent of her district’s schools. Covington drastically increased the class sizes of certain KC teachers following a model suggested by Bill Gates; this experiment ended, thankfully, when he left the district. ...
Continue ReadingTeach for America Displays Taken Down in Portland and Seattle
Sep 18, 2011 2 Comments ›› DoraTaylorAccording to a previous post on the Seattle Education blog, Parents Across America, Seattle: Part of Protest at Apple Store: Steve Jobs with Apple has gotten on the ed reform bandwagon and is offering free iPads to Teach for America recruits but of course none to real teachers who have teaching experience, degrees ...
Continue ReadingAn open letter to Michael Moore from Sharon Higgins
Sep 16, 2011 14 Comments ›› leoniehaimsonDear Mr. Moore, I am one of the people who will have the opportunity to see you at your UC Berkeley book event this Saturday night. It’s going to be great to hear you speak! Yesterday, as I listed to your interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, I was happy to hear how you have ...
Continue ReadingParent Involvement
Sep 14, 2011 1 Comment ›› pagrundyThis week, Parenting Magazine is sponsoring a blog-a-thon, in which parents from across the country, especially delegates to the 2010 and 2011 Mom Congresses, write open letters to their kids about what they're going to do for education this upcoming school year. This letter was written by PAA co-founder Pamela Grundy, who was the 2011 ...
Continue ReadingObama’s speech to Congress; so why am I skeptical?
Sep 12, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimsonObama’s speech last week to Congress has been described as a “wake up call”—with its aggressive and ambitious proposals to boost spending on education – including $30 billion to avoid further teacher layoffs, and $30 billion more to renovate school facilities. These funds that are desperately needed as more than 2/3 of states and ...
Continue ReadingUS House to vote on bad charter bill today
Sep 8, 2011 3 Comments ›› pureparentsPlease call your congressman today and ask him/her to vote NO on HR 2218 (see press release below). This bill is called the Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools bill, but we believe that it only serves to empower charter school operators and not parents or students. Look at the list of endorsers if you ...
Continue ReadingStudents choke on “reform” when lunch is 10 minutes long
Sep 7, 2011 No Comments ›› CarolineSFSo-called education "reform" means teaching to the test, narrowing curriculum -- and truncating lunch to 10 or 15 minutes. School food advocates object in a post on the popular The Lunch Tray blog. As I explained in a comment on the blog, educators aren't the ones who think insanely short lunches are