Austin Independent School District Battles On for Charter IDEA In-District against the Will of Parents and the Community
By Lorie Barzano Co-Chair of CoalitionSAUS (Strengthen Austin Urban Schools) A parent led group representing inner-city public schools working to ensure accessible, quality Public Education for all children and healthy, thriving Public Schools in Austin’s urban core In a special meeting on December 19, 2011, over the loud, repeated protests of thousands of parents and [...]
The Gulen Movement’s connection to the largest US charter network
By Sharon Higgins, founding member of Parents Across America Note: This is an expanded version of a guest post published in The Washington Post under Valerie Strauss’s column, The Answer Sheet, on March 27, 2012. The largest charter school network in the United States is operated by people in and associated with the Gulen Movement [...]
South Carolina Parents Oppose Corporate Ed Reform
South Carolina: Parent Opposition and Resistance on Ed Reform Initiatives For Immediate Release March 27, 2012 Contact Person: Sarah Johnson Phone: (803) 920-4058, (843) 819-8933 Email: CVedu20@gmail.com Local Parent/Teacher Advocacy Group Welcomes US Secretary of Education to Town Charleston, SC – Charleston Area Community Voice for Education, an affiliate of Parents Across America, extends a [...]
CT Gov proposes to take the public & parents out of public education
by Wendy Lecker, cross-posted from the Stamford Advocate. The Connecticut Education Commissioner, Stefan Pryor, is a co-founder and former board member of Achievement First chain of charter schools. If the Governor’s bill passes, Pryor will have the power to take over any struggling school in the state, eviscerating the power of the local school governance [...]
New research supports PAA LSC model
Last week PAA celebrated alongside Florida parents with the defeat of so-called “parent trigger” legislation, which would have allowed parents in “low-performing” schools to vote to close it, fire all the staff, or turn it into a charter school. But that doesn’t mean that we are completely satisfied with our schools and see no need [...]
Media Alert: PARENT PRESS CONFERENCE in Baton Rouge today
PARENTS PRESS CONFERENCE in Baton Rouge When: 2:00 p.m. today, March 22, 2012 Where: Steps of the Capitol, Baton Rouge, LA Reference: H B 976 Contact: Karran Harper Royal, with “Parents Across America” Phone: 504-722-8174 E-mail: karranroyal@yahoo.com Attached and copied below is a press release for a Parents’ Press Conference, featuring several organizations of parents [...]
Dissents from the status quo Council on Foreign Relations report
The report released yesterday was written by a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, co-chaired by Joel Klein, former head of the NYC Department of Education and now working for Murdoch’s News Corp, and directed by Julia Levy, former PR flack for DOE. The task force was stacked with privateers, including Wendy Kopp [...]
ACLU letter & Moratorium on Charter Schools needed in Delaware!
The follow is written by Annalisa Ekbladh, one of the founders of Communities 4 Education, a new affiliate of Parents Across America. For more information or to join the organization, email her at aekbladh@verizon.net The Delaware ACLU recently issued a letter to Delaware Secretary of Education Lillian Lowery (see below), prompted by the controversy surrounding [...]
Maryland students protesting school conditions met with attack dogs
See this interview of Ashley Pinder and Erin James, activist students at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland. On March 1, the students planned a walk-out of the school because of class sizes of up to 40 students per class — “We’re not learning” says Erin — unappetizing and non-nutritional school lunches, and the deporting [...]
President Obama’s education budget priorities wrong
PAA has serious concerns about President Obama’s education budget. Here is a one-page comparison chart detailing our positions regarding the President’s budget proposal. We sent a letter to members of the House and Senate education committees today which included the following comments, with our chart attached: Our general concern is that the budget seems to [...]
Clear Creek TX school board resolution vs. high-stakes testing
At least 40 Texas school boards have passed this resolution against high-stakes testing, “strangling our schools.” Here is the wording of the resolution passed by Clear Creek School District, a large district near NASA. It has been called “The shot heard around the county.” Why not around the country? If Texas school boards can pass [...]
Gov.Jindal has a death wish agenda for K-12 education in Louisiana
Things are bad everywhere but nowhere is it worse than in Louisiana, where Gov. Bobby Jindal and State Superintendent John White threaten to annihilate the state’s public schools with budget cuts, vouchers, the expansion of virtual charters, the erosion of teacher rights, and other forms of noxious corporate reform. The following is by Don Whittinghill [...]
California charter school aims to shut down successful public school
Guest post by Molly Black, parent, Los Altos, Calif. Founding Member of LASDVoices Los Altos, Calif., is a sleepy little town in a quiet part of Silicon Valley where shops close by 6 p.m. and the few restaurants in town are dark by 9 p.m. Families move to Los Altos to take advantage of the [...]
Parents Across America hails defeat of Florida’s Parent Trigger bill
For immediate release: March 10, 2012 Contacts: Rita Solnet, Boca Raton: (561) 289-7333; rsolnet@aol.com Caroline Grannan, San Francisco: (415) 412-5758; cgrannan@gmail.com Parents Across America hails defeat of Florida’s Parent Trigger bill: A victory of parents over forces that would privatize and profit from our public schools Public education and true parent empowerment were the winners [...]
Education forum sponsored by PAA Charleston affiliate
Sponsored by our newest affiliate, Charleston Area Community Voice for Education: Beyond CCSD’s Vision 2016: A Community Conversation about Testing and Accountability Do Performance and Achievement = Learning? Charleston Area Community Voice for Education presents Ceresta Smith -Free to the public- Monday, March 12th at 7:00 p.m. Seacoast Church 750 Longpoint Road, Mt. Pleasant, SC [...]
From the PAA Store: I test under duress
I test under duress: say no to standardized testin by ParentsAcrossAmerica Browse other t-shirt designs made on zazzle.com With great thanks to Colorado opt-out activist, Conny J., here’s a great t-shirt for your kid, and maybe yourself, to express your opposition to the high-stakes decisions made with standardized test scores. We know that schools are [...]
Attempted coup by ConnCAN and TFA in Bridgeport: a cautionary tale
Very often the corporate reformers appear to view elected school boards as getting in the way of their plans to privatize public education. Matt Miller, who wrote a famous article called “First Kill All the School Boards” that argued that “local control has become a disaster for our schools” was recently selected to write the first [...]
Florida Parent Groups Frustrated by Lack of Access
Check your pockets when a Corporate Education reformer claims to care about parent empowerment; nearly always, as in this case, they are working for their own private ends. For immediate release.Tallahassee, Florida On Saturday, March 3, 2012, for the third time in a matter of weeks, a real Florida parent was cut off mid-sentence during [...]
A corporate reform coup d’etat in Bridgeport
By Norm Pattis, the attorney who litigated this case, cross-posted from his blog. An Open Letter to the Connecticut General Assembly In re: Bridgeport’s Schools A call came in moments ago. Mayor Bill Finch and his aides are busy at work in Hartford, lobbying lawmakers to pass legislation retroactively justifying the disbanding of the elected [...]
Texas Lives Up to Moniker as Lone STARR State
In March, the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) will replace the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) test, which Texan students have taken annually since the implementation of No Child Left Behind. The STAAR test promises to have a higher degree of difficulty than the TAKS test and comes with more [...]
