Here is the most recent newsletter of the Network for Public Education.
It contains a clear statement of principles: what we are for and what we oppose.
Please read and forward to your friends.
If you belong to a group that is fighting for public schools, send them a copy of the newsletter and ask them to join us as an ally in the struggle to beat back corporate reform, privatization, mass school closings, and the punitive use of testing to stigmatize children, teachers, and schools.
The first newsletter from the Network for Public Education is out!
We aim to to knit together the hundreds of district and state organizations that are supporting their community schools.
Please read and get involved!
Diane
Several readers have contacted me asking how they can join the Network for Public Education.
Some read about it but don’t know how to find the website.
Here it is: http://www.networkforpubliceducation.org
If you belong to a grassroots organization, please become one of our allies.
We will connect you to other grassroots organizations fighting against high-stakes testing, mass school closings, privatization, and the misuse of test scores to evaluate teachers and close schools.
We will provide an archive of information and research on the major issues of the day.
If you are an individual parent or student or teacher or concerned citizen, join us.
Dues are $20 for individuals, $5 for students.
We are all volunteers. We have no paid staff.
We will work with you to magnify your voice and join with you to strengthen and improve 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.
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.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 