What Public School Parents Want in a New Federal Education Law   A Parents Across America Position Paper on the Reauthorization of the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) – No Child Left Behind   April, 2011 Introduction  “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” John Dewey, The School and … →

The Empowerment Parents Want: A Real, Effective Voice in our Children’s Education As corporate efforts to privatize and capitalize on public education are increasingly being exposed as ineffective and damaging, the wealthy sponsors of these controversial strategies – e.g. school closings, turnarounds, charter school expansion – have been attempting to re-brand them as “parent empowerment.” The problem is that the privateers are not paying attention to what parents actually want, or what works for children and schools. For example, last … →

Why PAA opposes California’s Parent Trigger law: It represents neither real parent choice nor empowerment California’s Parent Empowerment Act passed in early 2010 and has been supported by backers of corporate education reform nationwide. It is now being used as a model for legislation in other states, including New Jersey, Colorado and elsewhere. The law creates a process known as the Parent Trigger, which allows a majority of parents at a low-performing school to sign a petition to trigger one … →