The best group now organizing and mobilizing to strengthen public education is Parents Across America.
You don’t have to be a public school parent to join. PAA welcomes educators and everyone who supports public schools.
If you care about improving your public schools and fighting off corporate control and privatization, join Parents Across America.
PAA has chapters in many cities. If there is no PAA chapter in your city or town, start one.
Check out the website to learn about their activities and their mission.
In brief, it is to stop privatization, stop punitive high-stakes testing, stop the attacks on teachers, stop the school closings.
And it is to support policies like reducing class size, expanding early childhood education, expanding after-school programs and social services, and building collaboration among parents, teachers, and communities.
Parents want what is best for their children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When did the PTA stop doing this? What happened to them?
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How about joining together with Parents Across America and planning a “Public Schools Across America” event modeled after “Hands Across America” of 26 years ago?
For those of you who are younger than 35…
For 15 minutes, on Sunday, May 25, 1986, almost 7 million people (including thousands of us with our students), joined hands to form a line that stretched 4,152 miles from New York City’s Battery Park to the RMS Queen Mary pier in Long Beach, California. This nationwide event, called Hands Across America, raised 34 million dollars to fight hunger and homelessness.
Diane introduced Parents Across America is this blog… PAA is a great group, I have been in touch with them and proposed this idea conceptually based on the event “Hands Across America.”
I will be in NYC Jan. 26th – Jan. 29th if folks within driving distance would like to get together and get the ball rolling on this idea…
Here is the basic idea:
• “Preserving Public Education Across America?” “Preserve America’s Public Schools,” (any other ideas for a title?)
~ National orchestrated simultaneous summits held in each state across the country
~ Summits would be held on the same date, a weekend afternoon in each state in U.S.
~ Summits would be centrally located in each state so people could drive without having to take off work/ school or spend $ on flights/hotels, etc.
~ States could choose to join neighboring states for a tri-state summit, ie. Ohio, Michigan, Illinois
~ The purpose would be to celebrate our public schools AND share the cold, hard facts of privatization and raise public awareness that For-Profit does not mean education reform.
• Obviously a lot to plan and organize but look at all the stories we have here on Diane’s blog!
• State Superintendents (Texas), District Superintendents (nationwide), Parents, School Board Members, Teachers, Principals, Students, State Supreme Court rulings (LA) concerned citizens for the future of our children and our Democracy…
We are all protectors and defenders of our public schools as the foundation of our democracy… we could do this together.
AND… I am serious about joining me in NYC, Saturday or Sunday afternoon, Jan. 26 or Jan. 27th to get going on “Public Schools Across America.”
• Anyone have a place in mind we could gather?
Maureen Reedy
614-581-6690
maureen.reedy@gmail.com
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Please do more than this when you get together–focus on a nationwide effort to get parents to opt their children out of state testing. Have the letters ready–don’t hold hands–each parent/family write an opt out letter, ready to hand in to the local school principal. “Standardized” (& it’s not–all the ridiculous questions, the incorrect answers, the incompetent scorers) testing is the foundation of the house of cards, the tumor of the cancer that is killing our public schools, ridding them of experienced and dedicated teachers, closing them, choking them financially (testing costs BILLIONS of dollars, and the money is coming from OUR taxes). And–not to mention–what is happening to our children? They are being fed a dumbed-down, test-prep curriculum. Little ones and sped. students are crying over these tests. When are we going to stop this? I would say that NOW is the time.
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Sometimes an organization outlives its original purpose, but the conditions necessitating the original purpose do not go away (or go away for a time but return). When this happens, the original organization may drift so far from its original purpose that a fresh new organization must spring up to tend to the needs originally met by the first one, even if it still exists.
Why am I looking meaningfully at the AFT while I say these words? Oh, no reason…
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“You don’t have to be a public school parent to join. PAA welcomes educators and everyone who supports public schools.”
Maybe time to change the name of PAA.
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Feel the same about the YMCA?
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Yes.
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This wonderful organization helped defeat the Parent Trigger Law in Florida this year. However, they will have to fight it again now that Jeb is more determined to bring Florida down. Jeb got Tony Bennett into Florida, so it’s going to be a very hard fight this time around.
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