Archives for category: Network for Public Education

Tim Slekar and Shaun Johnson are fearless education activists who operate on many fronts to support public education. They write, they blog, they make videos, they spoof the loony ideas called “reform.”

On March 11, Anthony Cody and I were interviewed @TheChalkface about the new Network for Public Education. We described how we hope to provide a means for grassroots groups to get connected to one another; to supply them with information and research on important issues; and to let them know that they are not alone. We will oppose the misuse of testing to punish or reward teachers, and to close schools.

When we clear away all legal issues, we hope to be able to endorse candidates and to let voters in state and local elections know which candidates truly care about strengthening their public schools. We even intend to have a Seal of Approval for our allies.

Listen in here.

This is a great suggestion for the Network for Public Education: we need students and student organizations to join with us!

If you are a student, please join us. If you are part of a student group, please join us!

This is where you can sign up: http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org/network-membership/

We need you.

“I’m sure you have many pressing priorities as a new organization, but I would strongly recommend that you devote considerable attention to actively engaging US high school students in the process of reversing the privatization of public education and ending the obsession with standardized testing.

“Students have intimate knowledge of what really works in the classroom and doesn’t. They have borne the brunt of the testing regime and understand better than anyone the horrors of obsessive standardized testing.

“They should (and most want to) take ownership for the quality of their OWN education, and now have an opportunity to do so. As educators, we should recognize this as the “teachable moment” of a lifetime for young citizens and we ought to seize the day (Carpe Diem!) Please have a Network youth wing (by whatever name).

“I hope you will help educate and coordinate the actions of young activists nationally, provide them with first rate resources to organize peaceful, effective actions, and access to advice from wise, sympathetic adult educators. To do otherwise would ignore perhaps the most powerful constituency for authentic reform, as well as the main victims of our misguided policies of recent years.”