Here is an excerpt; a tape of the full speech is here. Excerpt: I still have to listen to high people here in Washington who insist to me that class size doesn’t matter… I always ask them where their own kids go to school. Typically in Washington, they go to very costly private schools where class sizes seldom rise higher than fifteen…. Here’s what I believe: the Senators and the President send their own kids to those kinds of schools; … →
Excerpt: This is a historic day. I am a historian. There has never before been a spontaneous grassroots org of teachers, parents and students all coming together to say save our schools…Promise yourself you will never forget this day! Today we join to protest the status quo. The status quo of high stakes testing, the status quo of attacks on the teaching profession, the status quo of privatization. The status quo is wrong; don’t let them say you’re defending the … →
After two days of movement-building speeches, workshops, and networking, the SOS march ended with a sun- and passion-drenched rally and march in the middle of Washington DC. It felt like a huge family reunion. Parents Across America was well-represented. It was so much fun to see our members meeting up with their friends from home. We even had star power – Pedro Noguera, Deb Meier, Angela Valenzuela, Diane Ravitch and, yes, Matt Damon, whose mother, Nancy Carlson Page, a professor … →
PAA had 20 members on Capitol Hill Thursday, talking to Senators and Congressmen from across the nation. Some PAA members also presented a workshop on PAA and some of our issues including testing and charter schools, with great results. Today started off with a fantastic keynote speech by Diane Ravitch and another PAA workshop, this one on what’s wrong with ESEA and the strategies promoted by Race to the Top, and what we need instead – small class size, different … →
Thousands of people will be converging on Washington, DC this week to speak out in support of our schools at the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. Parents Across America members will be out in full force all week! On Thursday we’re presenting the first of three workshops on “The New Parent Involvement,” and we’ll be meeting with members of Congress. We have packets prepared for them with the PAA position papers on ESEA reauthorization and on … →
Listen to the great song composed by Greg Gower and sung by Linda Gower for the Save our Schools March in DC. Greg and Linda are two of the founding members of Parents Across America -Spokane. Come join Parents Across America, Diane Ravitch, Matt Damon and many others in the Save Our Schools rally and march to the White House on Saturday, July 30 2011. More information here. President Obama, listen to us!
As an educator and strategic planning facilitator over the past four decades, Tom Olson has advised 13 different states on their education reform efforts, and has consulted with more than 500 local district and state strategic reform projects. He also served as a volunteer member on several Stand for Children (SFC) State Task Forces, and was a board member of the SFC Political Action Committee. He wrote the following letter to Jonah Edelman, the founder of Stand for Children, joining … →
What could be more admirable than an attempt to improve school meals? And making a profit by doing that can only be beneficial to everyone, right? That’s what San Francisco Bay Area-based Revolution Foods has convinced a lot of people, anyway. The private-sector enterprise has won acclaim for supposedly bringing better, healthier, fresher school meals to school cafeterias. Only trouble is, Revolution Foods claims that it can do that for the amount public schools receive from the government for school … →
Rahm Emanuel, the new Mayor of Chicago, walks out of an NBC interview when asked when asked what school he intends to enroll his children in. He intones: “My children are not an instrument of me being mayor.” But everyone else’s children are. Check out the video here and below. If the report in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet is correct, he has chosen the Lab School, where Obama sent his own kids, where Duncan went to school himself, and … →
This perceptive piece is reprinted with permission from the American Enterprise blog. Members of Parents Across America agree that Duncan’s policies are arbitrary, overreach his authority, and conflict with public opinion about how our schools should be improved. By Whitney Downs In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, education writer Stephanie Banchero highlighted the increasing impatience among state leaders over Congress’s inability to “fix” No Child Left Behind. Reauthorization of the law, which was enacted during the George W. Bush administration and … →
