Nancy Flanagan understands the power of joining forces for a common cause. She attended the second annual conference of the Network for Public Education and discovered a movement that is robust, alive, and growing to support high-quality public education.
“I don’t have the resources, as a retired teacher, to gather with like-minded compadres across the country on a regular basis. I have more time now, and more energy, and most definitely a clearer picture of what’s happening to America’s best (now endangered) idea: a completely free, high-quality, fully public education for every child. Assembling an umbrella gathering of voices and faces unified to the cause of reclaiming public education is a major challenge. I know this, in my bones, from lived experience.
“So it was gratifying and heartwarming (using those phrases in the deepest possible sense) to have seen firsthand that the movement is robustly alive, at the Network for Public Education (NPE) conference in Chicago, last weekend.
“And when I say “movement,” what I mean is this: People, like me, who have no particular resources or organizational funding/backing, who got on a plane to be in a room with those like-minded compadres–because they’re terrified that America might lose public education. People who think it’s not too late. People willing to stake their professional energy on doing right by all kids, keeping democratic equality as critical and central goal of the education system. People, in other words, who can’t be bought off–the go-to strategy of the corporatizers, privatizers, business-over-community leaders, self-aggrandizing ed-entrepreneurs and feckless policy-makers….,
“This “we have bigger fish to fry” perspective is so important–and I think that’s what drew so many parents, students and folks from non-union areas to Chicago. It’s no longer solely about testing, or teacher evaluation, or tenure, or the Common Core. It’s about the survival of a cherished public good.”
That’s the key takeaway. We stand together to defend what belongs to us all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well said Nancy Flanagan. Thanks Diane again for your vigilance and brain power–oh and energy!
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Apologize for being off-topic, but have you seen this? http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/feb/09/swedish-style-schools-wont-raise-standards
“(the schools)…are funded by the state but are independent of town hall control and run by independent organisations.
But Per Thulberg, director general of the Swedish National Agency for Education, said the schools had “not led to better results” in Sweden.”
Who woulda thunk it?
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You know, we have always had standards! Venting on a slightly different but related note, I recently read about a teacher rated as “inefficient” because of her students’ grades on a test in a subject she doesn’t teach, which is probably happening to thousands of teachers everywhere. How can any one score nullify 190 days of hard work?! Where are the supervisors and principals, as a group, on this? I just cannot believe that these ratings can stand up in a court of law! Does anyone know the status of the case about this in Long Island?
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Maybe they’re moving on:
“AltSchool, the startup that’s building a network of “micro-schools” across the country, is attracting major venture capital.
The San Francisco, CA-based company closed a $100 million Series B round from a host of Silicon Valley’s blue bloods: Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz led the round along with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s donor-advised fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Additional investment came from Emerson Collective, First Round Capital, Learn Capital, John Doerr, Harrison Metal, Jonathan Sackler, Omidyar Network and Adrian Aoun. The round also includes a new debt facility to fund school expansion.
Founded in 2013, AltSchool currently operates four “micro-schools” in San Francisco that focus on delivering a project-based curriculum supported by custom-built technologies for admissions, family communications, procurement and personalized learning plans for students. Classes, which are not divided into grade or age groups, are limited to 25 students and teachers can make over $100,000 per year. Yearly tuition hovers around $20,000, although financial assistance is available.”
They don’t like the large class sizes and constant testing in public schools 🙂
https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-05-04-mark-zuckerberg-silicon-valley-investors-bet-100-million-on-altschool?utm_content=buffer13f23&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Software, hardware, wearables, internal R and D, like engineering payroll, ya crazy stuff.
Anyway, they’re barking up the wrong tree. The secret to innovation is the bean bag chair, and I don’t see any.
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It’s funny what they want in their own schools- fewer tests, small class sizes, new facilities and teachers who are well-compensated.
I’m not seeing a whole lot of uniforms and demerits and such.
Really one could almost say they are “throwing money at the problem”, if “the problem” is schools 🙂
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Chiara: excuse the impertinence, but your last paragraph has one word too many.
The offender?
It’s the word “almost.”
😎
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C, Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Look forward to reading Curmudgucation’s take on AltSchool, with their aim of having “no local administrators.”
•”AltSchool currently employs 115 employees, a third of whom are educators.” Yes, they have tech engineers partnering w. teachers. Do they have a lot of lunch aides??
•”real estate tools [like Pink Hula Hoop in Newark, NJ?], tools to Manage admissions”
•”They have an app … reporting how a student is feeling that day.” So a student can report her/his project didn’t yield hoped-for result??
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Nancy, not to worry about “having the resources as a retired teacher to gather w/like-minded compadres across the country on a regular basis.” While the conference was wonderful (lucky to be there as a Chicagoan!), the adage, “think globally, work locally” fits like a glove: one organization of retirees in Rockford, IL, banded together &, being retired, had the time to do due diligence–filed F.O.I.A.s, attended school board meetings & planned questions, leafleted the community, garnered information from parents & from teachers (who couldn’t have done this w/o help–they supplied vital info., but it was all on the Q.T.–they would have been fired had they been active & outspoken), & got their terrible, Broad-trained superintendent sent packing by the school board! Several retired groups I belong to also support the students, the teachers the parents & the public school communities by leafleting & disseminating information as to how to opt out, having meetings w/legislators & questioning them at public forums, challenging pro-charter groups & attempts at public school take-overs (& education fund siphoning) by corporations such as K-12, working for candidates (& getting them elected, which has happened in numerous Chicago aldermanic wards!) who are pro-public education and for the 99% &, in general, working together in our communities for the good of the people–& achieving our goals, making our voices strong and heard.
It will & can happen–village by village, town by town, suburb by suburb, city by city & state by state–all over this country. It starts where we live, & it grows from there–just look at the opt out movement. Yes, WE did, yes, WE can &, yes, WE WILL!
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“People, in other words, who can’t be bought off–the go-to strategy of the corporatizers, privatizers, business-over-community leaders, self-aggrandizing ed-entrepreneurs and feckless policy-makers….,”
Even if they offered us each a billion dollars in tax free cash?
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Thanks for sharing this blog. I know, first-hand, just how difficult it is to bring diverse perspectives together without splitting off into warring factions over a single issue. The NPE Steering Committee did a good job of bringing voices together and poking at the right people. What impressed me most was the number of parents, community organizers, researchers and media folks in attendance. This is not strictly an educators’ war, as reformers would have you believe. NPE seems to have established the Big Tent of Public Education–congrats.
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