Last year, I wrote an open letter to Senator Patty Murray pleading with her to reconsider the lavish financial support charter schools were slated to receive in the soon to be re-authorized ESEA. My argument: The Supreme Court has found … Continue reading Thanks to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), It’s a Year Too Late for Hand-Wringing over Charter Schools
This is a repost of the original article written by my co-editor Carolyn Leith titled An open letter to Patty Murray on the ESEA rewrite: We need funding, NOT charter schools and posted in November, 2015. We felt it was time for a … Continue reading The ESEA rewrite: We need funding, NOT charter schools.
I will be posting a series on high stakes testing and opting out on this blog. Why? In other states where high stakes testing has become the norm, parents and educators are discovering that what is happening is harmful to their children and to education in general and they are pushing back by opting out. Unfortunately, high stakes testing has officially begun in Seattle. It started with the following memo from Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda issued this school year: “Beginning this fall, teachers who have been on this system for two school years prior to 2012-2013, and who … Continue reading Part 1: High stakes testing : A little history
Issued on November 8, 2011 Today, the national group, Parents Across America, sent a letter to the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee after noting that panelists testifying at a committee hearing today about reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education law included no parent representatives. PAA has reached out to the HELP committee repeatedly with our concern that parent voices are being left out of this critical discussion of the federal laws which will impact our children’s education for years to come. Here is the text of the letter to the HELP committee, which includes … Continue reading Parents Across America’s Position on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
There are so many great articles and posts coming into my inbox this week that I can hardly keep up! Here’s another must-read from Anthony Cody of Living in Dialogue. Below is an excerpt from his post Civil Rights Groups Press for Truly Quality Teachers: As Congress wrestles with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), they have a chance to address the issue of teacher quality once again. The Coalition for Teaching Quality — 82 organizations representing civil rights, parent, community, disability, and education advocates — have come together to demand that Congress re-commit to the … Continue reading Civil Rights Groups Asking for More Than Teach for America in Their Schools
Observations: It’s interesting how President Obama in his speech yesterday referred to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as a failed program with no mention of Race to the Top (RTTT) which was the same but worse. Some of us refer to RTTT as NCLB on steroids and it seems that at this time most people have recognized that RTTT is also a failed policy. It was a policy of forcing school districts to align to a specific set of standards and if the standards were not met, the school was “turned around”, meaning either the school was closed permanently, half … Continue reading Arne Duncan/President Obama’s New “Flexibility” Program, the NCLB Waivers
