Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Kitzhaber backs Richard Lariviere ouster while University of Oregon community rallies in support | OregonLive.com

Kitzhaber backs Richard Lariviere ouster while University of Oregon community rallies in support | OregonLive.com:

Kitzhaber backs Richard Lariviere ouster while University of Oregon community rallies in support

Published: Saturday, November 26, 2011, 7:31 PM Updated: Saturday, November 26, 2011, 8:44 PM

REAL PARENTS not Just Rented « Parents Across America

Blog « Parents Across America:

Good news in Seattle: corporate education reform tide is pushed back!

Nov 25, 2011 4 Comments ›› leoniehaimson

The 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 ...

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PSAT for 11-22-11: Give thanks for teachers

Nov 22, 2011 No Comments ›› pureparents

Today'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, ...

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Victory in Wake Co. school board elections & defeat for Tea Party!

Nov 9, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimson

Below 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 ...

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PAA letter to Senate HELP Committee: ESEA needs parent input!

Nov 8, 2011 2 Comments ›› pureparents

Today, Parents Across America sent a letter to the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee after noting that panelists testifying this morning at a committee hearing on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education law included no parent representatives. PAA has reached out to the HELP committee repeatedly with our concern that ...

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Stotsky: yes, parents were excluded from developing the Common Core

Oct 29, 2011 1 Comment ›› leoniehaimson

Sandra 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, ...

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ESEA moving in HELP committee

Oct 20, 2011 No Comments ›› pureparents

Update 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, ...

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One mom’s battle to ensure her son’s right to opt out of testing

Oct 20, 2011 2 Comments ›› leoniehaimson

This 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 ...

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Our proposals on the Senate ESEA reauthorization bill

Oct 19, 2011 5 Comments ›› leoniehaimson

This 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 ...

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Class size crisis in Oregon: classes of forty or more

Oct 18, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimson

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PSAT: Tell your senator what you think about more charter schools

Oct 4, 2011 No Comments ›› pureparents

It'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 ...

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School reform’s magic bullet(s) by John Young

Sep 28, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimson

Today’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 ...

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Testimony to the Oregon Legislature by our affiliate, SOS Oregon

Sep 24, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimson

Oregon 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 ...

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Mixed Feelings about CMS’s Broad Prize

Sep 21, 2011 2 Comments ›› pagrundy

PAA 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 ...

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Warning to Michigan parents and teachers about John Covington

Sep 20, 2011 3 Comments ›› leoniehaimson

An 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. ...

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Teach for America Displays Taken Down in Portland and Seattle

Sep 18, 2011 2 Comments ›› DoraTaylor

According 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 ...

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An open letter to Michael Moore from Sharon Higgins

Sep 16, 2011 14 Comments ›› leoniehaimson

Dear 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 ...

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Parent Involvement

Sep 14, 2011 1 Comment ›› pagrundy

This 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 ...

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Obama’s speech to Congress; so why am I skeptical?

Sep 12, 2011 No Comments ›› leoniehaimson

Obama’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 ...

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US House to vote on bad charter bill today

Sep 8, 2011 3 Comments ›› pureparents

Please 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 ...

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Students choke on “reform” when lunch is 10 minutes long

Sep 7, 2011 No Comments ›› CarolineSF

So-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