Meet the PAA founders: Leonie Haimson
This profile is part of an ongoing series of portraits of key PAA members.
In the beginning, there was Leonie Haimson.
Leonie was a key force in the creation of Parents Across America, and remains at the heart of our activities. From her computer in her Greenwich Village office, she writes, researches, and stays in touch with activists and reporters across the country. After more than a decade of educational work, she has become an expert in the ins and outs of politics and policy – how to organize a conference or a demonstration, when to alert the press to an important story, when and how to investigate a dubious educational claim.
Leonie always grounds her actions in schoolhouse-level reality, drawing on her lengthy experience as a New York public school parent. Her educational activism began when her daughter was in first grade in a large class at a New York City public elementary school, and the teacher remarked how much more the children learned on days when some of them were absent. Leonie, then a reporter on environmental issues, did some digging and
From Oregon SOS: Why We Need to Move Away From High-Stakes Testing
This is Oregon SOS’s latest blog post about high stakes testing — a response to a newspaper opinion piece by Sue Levin of Oregon Stand for Children” In response to Sue Levin’s commentary in the Oregonian on July 31st regarding high-stakes testing, the real question shouldn’t be how many times does a student test, but [...]