Public Schools Week is March 25-29.
Download the toolkit of the Network for Public Education and do your part to support public schools!
The forces of privatization are rising up, making promises and failing to keep any of those promises.
Public schools are the bedrock of democracy, doors open to all. Certified teachers in every classroom. Public schools strive for equality of educational opportunity, not privilege for the few.
Get involved. Do yourpart as a citizen.
Whose schools? Our schools!
The Network for Public Education Action fund is happy to endorse Pam Harbin for Pittsburgh school board! She is running in District 4.
Pam has a long history of supporting public school students and public schools. She has been working on the ground for twelve years in the fight to improve and save public education in Pittsburgh as a parent, community organizer and a long-time disability rights advocate. She has served on numerous PPS district-wide advisory committees, and has been an unofficial school board watchdog, streaming and/or attending more than 2,000 hours of school board meetings.
Pam is the Co-Founder of the Education Rights Network (ERN), a parent-led organization working for fully resourced, inclusive and quality education for students in Pennsylvania. She is also the immediate past president and a board director for Evolve Coaching, an organization that supports individuals with disabilities and their communities through education, employment, and the arts.
Pam has a clear sense of what it takes to create a system that works for all kids. She told NPE Action that the district needs “smaller class sizes and a smaller ratio of kids to adults in each building with more teachers, counselors, social workers, paraprofessionals, nurses, librarians, and other staff that keeps the building functioning at its best.”
She is also keenly aware of the dangers posed by the privatization movement, and how it can grow in a city like Pittsburgh.
The primary election is on May 21, 2019. Please be sure to get out and vote for Pam Harbin, a powerhouse public education advocate.
This is a message from theNetwork for Public Education.
2019 will be the year of the public school, with your help and support.
“From West Virginia to California teachers are boldly standing up for themselves, their students and their schools. Teachers are walking out due to a lack of sufficient funding, which has resulted in the deterioration of salaries, fewer services for children and increased class size.
“They are also making it clear that they understand why public school funding has been drained. Privatization schemes like charters and vouchers have made school funding a competition, not a public obligation.
“As Oakland Education Association President, Keith Brown, told the Washington Post:
More than $50 million is diverted every year to charter schools while our students have a 1,750 to 1 ratio for students to school nurses and 600 to 1 for guidance counselors. The charter schools that capture our dollars lack financial transparency and accountability standards…
“In West Virginia, teachers and school service workers had a two-day walk out to show their opposition to provisions in proposed legislation that would have created the state’s first charter schools and allowed vouchers in the form of education savings accounts (ESAs).”
Open the link to find the NPE toolkit, which shows how YOU can make 2019 the year of the public school.
The Network for Public Education Action fund is developing a web-based score card for the 2020 presidential candidates.
We need YOUR help!
We want to keep score on where the candidates stand on issues that matter to students, teachers, parents, and public schools.
We want to know if they support public schools or if they support privatization.
We will keep the website updated based on the candidates’ public statements on television and at town halls.
We will check their funding reports to see if they are funded by the usual privatization-friendly billionaires and hedge-fund managers.
We urge you to attend their town halls and ask them questions about funding for public schools, about charters and vouchers, about testing, about federal policy requiring (unnecessary) annual testing, and about (unnecessary) federal funding for charter schools.
We need your help to keep our score care up to date once it is up and running.
We will not let education be forgotten in the 2020 race!
Climate change. Health care. Taxes. These are topics that 2020 Presidential hopefuls are happy to discuss. But as important as these topics are, we cannot let our public schools be ignored.
That is why we started The NPE Action 2020 Candidates Project.
In cities across this nation, public schools are disappearing. The city of New Orleans is now a system of privately run charter schools. Vouchers and voucher “workarounds” send taxpayer money from public schools to private and religious schools. Religious schools are flipping themselves into charter schools in order to get public funds. The Koch Brothers have promised to target five states in which they will work to make public education disappear.
Private “choice” is trumping public voice. Test scores are the rationale to shut and shutter community schools even though charter school test scores are not better than those of public schools, and studies show that students who leave public schools with vouchers often do worse.
The Network for Public Education Action’s 2020 Candidates Project will make sure that the issue of school privatization is not ignored. We will grade candidates on their positions regarding charter schools, vouchers, and high-stakes testing. We will grade them by how much they take from the billionaires who believe in the privatization of public schools and score each candidate on the company they keep. They can run for office but they can’t hide from the hard questions we will ask about school privatization.
This week is National School Choice Week.
Since 1994, Congress has allocated billions of dollars to expand and launch charter schools.
This year, Congress will award nearly $500 million to charter schools that are already supported by billionaires.
Stop the School Choice Scam! Congress should allocate money to underfunded public schools, instead of wasting money on charters and vouchers chosen by fewer than 10% of students across the nation.
Rachel M. Cohen, writing in The Intercept, understands what’s new about the L.A. strike. The teachers are fighting for their students and smaller class sizes, but they are loudly and clearly doing somthing else: They are fighting against charter schools. They are fighting against the pro-charter policies of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Arne Duncan. They are fighting against the pro-charter policies of Jerry Brown, Andrew Cuomo, Corey Booker, and rising Congressional star Hakeem Jeffries.
Cohen writes:
“The centrality of opposition to charter school growth in the LA protests has put many Democrats in an uncomfortable position. The Democratic Party has long straddled an awkward political balancing act between the charter school and labor movements, which both fund Democratic candidates but war with each other. Today, with people across the country focused on the LA teachers, most Democratic lawmakers have stayed silent, and even those who have weighed in have mostly avoided commenting on the union’s opposition to charter school growth….
“The Intercept reached out to all 47 members of the Senate Democratic caucus to ask if they wanted to weigh in on the LA teachers strike and the demands that teachers are striking over. All Democratic senators were also asked to clarify their general views on charter school growth.
“Only seven of them responded.
“A spokesperson for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., referred The Intercept to a tweet Harris posted on Monday in support of the striking teachers, and said the senator is “particularly concerned with expansions of for-profit charter schools and believes all charter schools need transparency and accountability.” In September, California legislators passed a ban on for-profit charters in the state….
“Martina McLennan, a spokesperson for Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., responded with a statement that did not directly address the LA strike:…
“Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s statement also did not directly address the strike. “I support the rights of all workers to join together and fight for better working conditions,” he said. “But it’s shameful that American teachers have to fight so hard just to get the basic supports they need to serve their students. We need to do better as a country investing in public education and public school teachers.”
“Saloni Sharma, a spokesperson for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., referred The Intercept to a tweet Warren posted on Monday in support of the striking teachers. She also added that the senator believes rapid charter school expansion can pose a threat to the financial health of traditional public schools, which is why Warren opposed a ballot measure in 2016 that would have allowed up to 12 new charters to open in Massachusetts per year. “While she generally shares the concerns voiced by LA teachers on this and other issues, she can’t really speak to the charters’ specific impact on LA schools — the LA teachers are the best experts on that,” Sharma said. “We should listen to them.”…
“Ryan King, a spokesperson for Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, said his boss “believes that teachers in Nevada, and across the country, should be treated with dignity and paid a living wage for the work they do in educating our kids. The senator believes that Congress must do all it can to support quality public education in America and ensure our nation’s teachers have the resources and support they need to educate students.”
“Only two other people responded. Jonathan Kott, a spokesperson for Joe Manchin of West Virginia, declined to comment, saying “we are not weighing in on a local issue in California” and that the senator’s “record on charter schools is well-documented.” (Manchin, who voted against Betsy DeVos’s nomination for education secretary, specifically cited her support for charters and private school vouchers as reasons.) Keith Chu, a spokesperson for Ron Wyden of Oregon, also declined to comment.
“Sanders did not respond to a query about his position on charter schools, but he, Warren, and Brown remain the only likely 2020 presidential hopefuls in the Senate who’ve had anything to say about the strike at all. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Cory Booker of New Jersey did not respond to our questions, nor have they publicly commented. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein has also stayed notably silent on the teachers strike happening in her own state.”
Feinstein’s silence is odd. She was just re-elected,and she is very wealthy. She doesn’t need the billionaire’s money, she will never stand for election again. Maybe Eli Broad is a close friend?
Unlike the elected Democrats, the UTLA has drawn the connection between the billionaires and the attack on public school, unions, and teachers.
California, a blue state, has more charter schools in the nation. Ninety percent of charters are non-union. One of the reasons that rightwingers love charters is that they are non-union.
UTLA is making a point: Real Democrats support public schools, not privately managed charters.
Real Democrats are not allied with the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and Betsy DeVos.
Every Democratic candidate for 2020 should declare now whether they support the UTLA; whether they support public schools or charter schools; whether they support teachers’ right to bargain collectively.
A tweet is not enough. Hop on a plane and get to Los Angeles and stand with the teachers if you are a real Democrat.
Here is the first report on the thousands of teachers who marched today in Los Angeles.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-teachers-march-20181215-story.html
More funding for schools! Not privatization!
LAUSD Teachers March in DTLA as Union Moves Closer to Calling First Strike in Nearly 30 Years
This full-page ad appeared in the Los Angeles Times a few days ago. It was paid for by the United Teachers of Los Angeles.
Steven Singer has written an urgent message to members of Congress:
Stop hiring TFA as your education staff. Hire a real teacher.
TFA staff comes free to members of Congress, because a California tech billionaire pays for them.
It is a Trojan horse gift. They join your staff to advocate for TFA and its interests.
Hire a career educator to advise you.
His advice rings true for me personally. In 2010, I had a meeting with Iowa Senator Tom Hardin, who was chair of the Committee in charge of education. Richard Rothstein and I told him that NCLB was a disaster. He was shocked to hear this. His staff assured him that it was a great success. His staff was TFA.
Diane Ravitch's blog 