www.njtag.org - What is NJTAG? What do we Believe?

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New Jersey Teacher Activist Group (NJTAG)

What is NJTAG? What do we Believe?

NJTAG is a grassroots democratic group of New Jersey educators united in efforts to both save and transform public education.

NJTAG Mission Statement 
The Mission of the New Jersey Teacher Activist Group (NJTAG) is to ensure equitable access to quality, public, progressive educational opportunities for ALL children and to foster and support teacher agency and activism both inside and outside the classroom.


NJTAG Vision
NJTAG believes that teachers should be leading the movement to save public education.  NJTAG seeks to enact positive transformation of public education through

• Advocating for
• community based education
• free, public & equitable education funding/opportunities for all students
• abolishing standardized testing in favor of multiple, holistic, quality assessments

• Fostering and supporting teachers as activists
• Creating and implementing curriculum focused on democratic and liberatory curriculum
• Creating and implementing critical inquiry to action groups for teachers to use their classroom as sites for inquiry into practices that promote social critique and liberatory democratic action
• Providing professional development addressing issues such as teacher agency and activism, critical pedagogy, and democratic teaching practices

We plan on formally joining the national network of teacher activist groups. The National TAG Network Platform:

Democratic School GovernanceTAG supports efforts to strengthen schools and communities by ensuring and protecting local parent, educator and student leadership of school governance at all levels. We believe in diverse, democratically elected local school boards and councils. We support the creation of structures that enable meaningful and informed inclusive participation.


School and Community-Based Solutions to School Transformation

TAG believes that local communities and those affected by school reform should be looked to for the wisdom and knowledge to transform their local schools. This process should be bottom-up, participatory and highly democratic to engage schools and communities in school improvement and transformation. There should be mutual responsibility and accountability among educators, families, youth, and communities. This process must secure the voice, participation and self-determination of communities and individuals who have been historically marginalized.


Free, Public and Equitable Educational Opportunities for All Students

TAG supports measures that ensure every student access to a fully funded, equitable public education that is not threatened by market-based reforms such as vouchers, charter schools, or turnarounds by entities that divert public funds to private enterprise. We demand increased funding to end inequities in the current segregated and unequal system that favors those with race or class privilege. We believe that resources should be distributed according to need, and particularly to those historically under-resourced by the impact of structural, racial and economic discrimination and disinvestment. Public schools should be responsive to the community, not the marketplace.


Curricula and Pedagogies that Promote Creative, Critical and Challenging Education

TAG supports transformative curricula and pedagogies that promotewww.njtag.org - Home: