by Michele Gray, Parents Across America – Central Pennsylvania (originally posted as oped at the Centre Daily Times) The PSSAs are upon us. Notices from schools advise parents that our kids get enough sleep, stay hydrated, eat a healthy breakfast and take breaks from after-school activities. It sounds like students are going to be running a marathon. With the support of education experts, some parents in State College and neighboring communities are choosing a different path. Under Pennsylvania Code Title … →

Choppers and charters by Julie Woestehoff, cross posted at http://pureparents.org Even though the story was not even carried in the Tribune print edition, the World’s Greatest Newspaper ran a letter today tearing into a recent Trib blog post about the PURE/Parents Across America position against the parent trigger. Here’s how they put it: “As parents, we are outraged by statements in a story you ran about PURE’s fight against parent engagement in schools.” Right. That’s PURE – always fighting against … →

(This is a slightly revised version of a post that originally appeared on Naomi Klein’s site on Oct. 2, 2010) By Sue Peters When I saw the roster of invited guests for NBC’s week-long “Education Nation summit” that began Sept. 26, I sensed that viewers would not be getting a fair cross-section of perspectives. The “top leaders in education” that NBC rounded up primarily included CEOs (from AOL, State Farm, Netflix, Teach for America, Inc.), politicians, charter school operators, and … →

By Sue Peters; cross-posted on March 23, 2011 at seattleducation2010| For the Record… It looks like the Broad Foundation is actively trying to whitewash the history of their Superintendent Academy graduate, Maria Goodloe-Johnson, who was fired by the Seattle School Board earlier this month along with her handpicked CFO, Don Kennedy, for her failure to address a rampant case of fraud happening within the district’s central office. The District Administration magazine web site has just published a defense of Goodloe-Johnson … →

Posted on March 22, 2011 by seattleducation2010| by Dora Taylor When our former Broad superintendent hurriedly pushed through the proposal, her edict, to bring Teach for America to Seattle with the assistance of our interim superintendent and then school board president Michael DeBell, many of us asked where the money would come from to pay the $4,000 per TFA, Inc. recruit each year. We were told that there would be a “private funder” who would pay that expense. I rolled … →

Seismic path in Japan Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush writes in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune about the new teacher evaluation system enacted last week by the Florida legislature. The law will link teacher jobs to student standardized test scores. He praises the move as “forging a seismic path for modernizing the teaching profession nationwide.” Wow. Sure, Jeb’s kinda right. The new law is likely to have a catastrophic effect on communities, families, the economy, employment, and other basic infrastructures of life. … →

This was published originally in Silicon Valley’s Education Foundation blog,  “Thoughts on Education.” The PAA position paper on the Parent Trigger is here. By Caroline Grannan and Sharon Higgins Simplistic ideas may look appealing at first glance, but they rarely solve complex problems. Too often they have the potential to make things worse. That’s true of California’s so-called Parent Empowerment Act. It created the “parent trigger,” which allows a majority of parents in a low-performing school to petition for drastic changes, … →