By Sue Peters, co-editor of the Seattle Education 2010 blog & founding member of Parents Across America Huffington Post, February 4, 2011 The current crowd of education reformers like to dismiss any of us who disagree with their agenda as “defenders of the status quo.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I am not a defender of the status quo in public education because the status quo is currently No Child Left Behind and its insidious spin-off Race to … →

Parents mobilize nationwide Pam Grundy, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools parent activist (and frequent poster to this blog), will be part of next week’s launch of Parents Across America, a coalition of parents who support equity, diversity and parent involvement in public education. She says the idea for a national parents’ network emerged as local activists realized that issues they were dealing with often originate on a national level. Big-money donors such as The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation … →

There has been much publicity in recent years about how for more than a decade, Finnish students have excelled in the international comparisons called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), exams given each three years in reading, math, and science to samples of 15-year-olds globally. In the current issue of the New Republic, Samuel E. Abrams, a visiting scholar at Teachers College, explains what Finland did to turn around its education system, starting in the 1970’s: Finland’s schools weren’t … →