by Rita M. Solnet If the audience had their way Thursday evening, I think the Don Estridge High Tech Middle School janitors might have found dumpsters filled with FCATs in a show of solidarity the morning after a testy Town Hall Meeting was held! U.S. Congressman Ted Deutch hosted an Education Town Hall in his hometown of Boca Raton, Fla. in anticipation of returning to session to debate and decide upon reforming and reauthorizing the federal No Child Left Behind … →

Pamela is a parent at the Shamrock Gardens Elementary School in Charlotte NC, and a member of Mecklenburg Acts, an affiliate of Parents Across America.  She was chosen to be a part of the Mom Congress. by Pamela Grundy, cross posted at Seen from the ‘Rock The night before Barack Obama was elected President, I shook his hand. How that happened is a long and somewhat complicated story, but I won’t go into it now. What I remember best is the … →

We have a terrible situation here in Katonah-Lewisboro, Westchester County, where Paul Kreutzer, a superintendent from New Berlin, Wisconsin, is about to be offered our  superintendent position in a back-room way by our school board and we have only until Tuesday evening to try to stop this. Kreutzer has done so much to harm his previous district.  It would take pages to detail, but among other things, we were told by the New Berlin union president that high school electives are now … →

by Julie Woestehoff On the first day of spring break for the Chicago Public Schools, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel came out with guns blazing, drawing clear battle lines with Chicago teachers and parents by announcing that he will appoint Jean-Claude Brizard as the district’s Chief Executive Officer. Brizard has been school superintendent in Rochester, N.Y., for about three years, where he quickly became a divisive figure who recently garnered a 95 percent no confidence vote from the city’s teachers. Parents don’t … →

Just as Sandra Stotsky has criticized the new Core Curriculum standards for English Language Arts in her testimony before the Texas legislature, in his testimony, James Milgram, Professor emeritus at Stanford and a member of the Common Core Validation committee, points out their  flaws in math: I would like to testify in support of the bill Rep. Huberty filed, HB 2923, to prevent the so called Core Standards, and the related curricula and tests from being adopted in Texas. My … →

Parents have deep concerns about the Common Core standards and their associated assessments, signed onto by 43 states and the District of Columbia.  They have been adopted and developed in a rushed manner, because of pressure from the Gates Foundation and the US Department of Education, which threatened to withhold “Race to the Top” grants from any state which did not promise to adopt them. These standards and their assessments are likely to cost states and districts tens of billions … →