Venture capitalists and deep-pocketed corporate foundations, such as Bain Capital and the Walton Family Foundation, are moving aggressively to remake MA public schools based on their right-wing ideology. They are funding “Stand for Children” to sell a ballot initiative that would undermine our children’s learning environment and sharply restrict teacher job protections. Don’t let them do in Massachusetts what they did to Illinois!

To learn more and sign a pledge calling on Stand for Children to withdraw its ballot initiative, click here. 

In the spring of 1982, a small group of committed activists came together to fight a ballot question that threatened to seriously undermine Massachusetts public schools. The coalition named itself Citizens for Public Schools and went on to wage a successful campaign to prevent public aid to private schools.

This year, like 30 years ago, a misnamed and ill-conceived ballot question–backed by a group claiming to speak for children–would undermine our public school educators and students. CPS has joined with others to fight this ballot question, just as we fought and won in 1982.

To honor and continue this important work, we need a party!  On Thursday, June 14, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, a celebratory event in honor of our 30^th Anniversary will be held at the home of Deborah Goldberg and Michael Winter, 37 Hyslop Road, Brookline.

To sponsor, send a greeting in the program, make a donation or buy a ticket online, click here. 

Join the CPS effort against this ballot question by letting us know you want to help. Email office@citizensforpublicschools.org

Today’s Boston Globe reports on a screening of the documentary film “Race to Nowhere” and a discussion the film generated in Harvard, MA, about unhealthy pressures placed on students.

“Race to Nowhere,’’ which features interviews with students, parents, teachers, and administrators from Connecticut to California, argues that the high-stakes push to achieve has created a generation of high-strung students constrained in a “one-size-fits-all’’ system. It was produced and co-directed by a California mother of three who began the project when her own children developed symptoms of depression over their schooling.

A series of screenings are scheduled this week and in coming weeks throughout Massachusetts. This Thursday, Jan. 27, there will be a screening and discussion at Northeastern University at 7 p.m. For ticket and more information, email tickets@racetonowhere.com or call 925-310-4242. For the full Massachusetts schedule, click here.

“There really is a bipartisan consensus on education reform. It happens to be the Republican agenda of the past 30 years, minus the Republicans’ traditional contempt for federal control of education policy. Where did the Democratic agenda go? So, having no political leadership to support public education, collective bargaining, or the dignity of the teaching profession, we must look for leadership wherever it can be found. Right now, it’s among the people who have stood up for the rights of teachers on the cold and windy streets of Madison, Wisconsin, as well as those who have rallied in their own cities and towns.”

–Diane Ravitch, in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog.

Richard Rothstein

Join us Thursday, April 14, at our CPS Annual Meeting when we honor the extraordinary contributions of researcher and author Richard Rothstein. Don’t miss this rare chance to hear and exchange ideas with the author of Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap and many other fine books and articles. A research analyst for the Economic Policy Institute and former education columnist for The New York Times, Rothstein’s analysis of education policy and its impact on public school children is unfailingly clear, incisive and based on solid evidence.

Writing in the Washington Post “Answer Sheet” blog, Rothstein said this:  ”Making teacher quality the only centerpiece of a reform campaign distracts our attention from other equally and perhaps more important school areas needing improvement, areas such as leadership, curriculum, and practices of collaboration…. Blaming teachers is easy. These other areas are more difficult to improve. But most important, making teacher quality the focus distracts us from the biggest threat to student achievement in the current age: our unprecedented economic catastrophe and its effect on parents and their children’s ability to gain from higher-quality schools.” We are eager to follow up Diane Ravitch’s powerful and inspiring talk (covered in the last issue of the Backpack and in Boston College Magazine) with a visit from this influential authority on education and social policy. These two leaders are creating the beginnings of a serious national conversation about the future of our public schools and our democracy.

CPS will also give a special lifetime award in honor of the late Sumner Z. Kaplan, as well as Activists for Public Schools awards to Sen. Kenneth Donnelly, Rep. David Sullivan, and the Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts.

The event will be held Thursday, April 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Church on the Hill, 140 Bowdoin St., Boston.

Click here to register now.

Thursday, May 26, 2011, 10 – 11:30 a.m.

Speak Out for Public Education: Rally and Press Conference, Harvard Square (in “The Pit,” behind Out of Town News).

While Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is inside Harvard Yard performing as Chief Marshal of his 25^th Harvard Class Reunion, a group of prominent educators and public school teachers will be outside the ivied walls offering a public critique of his policies.

Speakers include Centro Presente, Prof. Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Whitney Elliot, Alfie Kohn, Deborah Meier, Merrie Najimy, Monty Neill, Ruth Rodriguez Fay, Larry Aaronson. For more information, contact Jenny Kastner 617-945-2869.

Save Our Schools! Rally in Washington, D.C., Saturday, July 30

Citizens for Public Schools is proud to join FairTest and other organizations that have endorsed the Save Our Schools Rally. Educators and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies that falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures. To counter what they call unfair attacks on teachers and public education, a growing coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools.

On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the White House in Washington, DC and at locations around the nation to express their desire to reclaim the right to determine the path of education reform in their own communities. The “Save Our Schools” March and allied events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists. For more information, click here.

Ann O’Halloran testified Tuesday, June 7, 2011, before the Joint Education Committee of the Massachusetts legislature in favor of House Bill 153. Among other things, she said this:

It is distressing that so many schools lack libraries and librarians, have relentless cutbacks in the arts, music, drama, after school programs, lack appropriate resources in books, technology and science labs, have constant cutbacks in special education, in medical, psychological, and social work supports that are essential to so many students. While the Commonwealth has built a mammoth testing system for students with huge concomitant costs  – with an intent to expand even further – it has been complicit in the ongoing cutbacks of the very basics of a modern school system.

To read her full testimony, click here.

Diane offers more than enough great reasons to head to DC on July 30 and join her, Deborah Meier, Monty Neill, and many of your CPS friends. Here are just a few:

I am marching to protest the status quo of high-stakes testing, attacks on the education profession, and creeping privatization.

I want to protest the federal government’s punitive ideas about school reform, specifically, No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top. Neither of these programs has any validation in research or practice or evidence. The nation’s teachers and parents know that NCLB has been a policy disaster. Race to the Top incorporates the same failed ideas. Why doesn’t Congress know?

I want to protest the wave of school closings caused by these cruel federal policies. Public schools are a public trust, not shoe stores. If they are struggling, they should be improved, not killed.

Read the rest of her Blog post here. To learn more about the rally and register, click here.

Greetings!

I just returned from the SOS Rally and conference in Washington DC. It was uplifting to join with other progressive education advocates from across the country. The principles of SOS are totally in sync with the CPS agenda:

Guiding Principles

For the future of our children, we demand:

• Equitable funding for all public school communities
• Equitable funding across all public schools and school systems
• Full public funding of family and community support services
• Full funding for 21st century school and neighborhood libraries
• An end to economically and racially re-segregated schools
• An end to high stakes testing used for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation
• The use of multiple and varied assessments to evaluate students, teachers, and schools
• An end to pay per test performance for teachers and administrators
• An end to public school closures based upon test performance
• Teacher, family and community leadership in forming public education policies
• Educator and civic community leadership in drafting new ESEA legislation
• Federal support for local school programs free of punitive and competitive funding
• An end to political and corporate control of curriculum, instruction and assessment decisions for teachers and administrators
• Curriculum developed for and by local school communities
• Support for teacher and student access to a wide-range of instructional programs and technologies
• Well-rounded education that develops every student’s intellectual, creative, and physical potential
• Opportunities for multicultural/multilingual curriculum for all students
• Small class sizes that foster caring, democratic learning communities

Read the Washington Post story on the event here. And among the many exciting videos from the event, here’s an interview with Matt Damon and our own Larry Aaronson, Matt’s high school history teacher. And here are excerpts from some of the many fine speakers. –Marilyn Segal, CPS Executive Director

YOUR Public School Under Attack:
Organizing to Fight Back!

Massachusetts public schools are among the nation’s best, so why are 82% of our schools labeled failures by the federal No Child Left Behind law? Flawed tests are being used to misjudge and label our schools, students and teachers. What are we going to do about it?

On Saturday, Oct. 15, at the Bayside Expo Center in Boston, join parents, teachers, students and concerned citizens to share ideas, strategize and organize to achieve our goal: sensible assessment policies and quality public schools for every child. Click here to register now!

The conference begins with an exciting morning panel of knowledgeable speakers on MCAS Reform, The Struggle to Preserve Boston Schools, Organizing Parents Across America and Exposing “Astroturf” (i.e., not really grass roots) Education Groups.

Stay for morning and afternoon workshops where participants will learn important background information and then strategize on pressing educational issues including high-stakes testing, charter schools, threats to urban public schools, educating the legislature, investing in public higher education, youth organizing and the school-to-prison pipeline, and organizing parents and school committees.

Click here for more information and to register now!

CPS President Paula Parnagian acknowledged the diversity of conference goers: old and new members from across the state of Massachusetts.

Thanks to all who worked so hard to make the 2011 CPS Fall Issues Conference a success. And thanks to all our old and our many new friends who joined us for a high-energy, productive day of sharing ideas for action to protect and improve our public schools.

Watch for a detailed report in the next edition of the CPS Backpack Newsletter. For now, here are a few highlights from the morning panel of speakers.

From BTU President Richard Stutman’s welcome: “Thankfully, there is a Side One, good caring people who don’t want to turn over schools to the Bill Gates and Paul Grogans of the world. Our job to turn things around, educate people, the legislature about corporate influence. To do this we draw on our great assets: teachers, parents, and students working to keep alive public education for all.”

From Past CPS President Ruth Rodriguez’s opening comments: “Mr. President, we come today with determination to let you know that we will not sit idly while poor White, Native American, Black and Latino students continue to receive an unequal education that is leaving the majority behind. The education apartheid in our public schools system must be addressed by you and immediately eradicated. The mandates and conditions forced by you to entice school districts into accepting federal monies under RTTT only serve to increase the pervasive actions by many districts for more test prepping and in extreme cases for cheating by administrators fearful of losing the funding, and/or of having their school closed by the state (You need only to look at what is happening in Atlanta and many other cities).”

The conference united parents, teachers, students and others to discuss challenges like Stand for Children's dangerous ballot question and how to defeat it.

From City Councilor Charles Yancey’s comments on morning panel: “For 15 years, I have advocated building at least one new high school in Boston. More than 50 have been constructed around Massachusetts since we last built one in Boston, in 1979. People say, ‘How can you spend all that money with the fiscal crisis?’…The one department in Boston singled out for dramatic cuts is the Boston School Department…We’re going in the wrong direction. It’s never reported in the Globe or the Herald because they’re thrilled with the direction…We have a lot of work to do. If we do not mount an aggressive and effective campaign to protect public education, if we are seduced by charters, if we fail, my grandchildren, and their children will be faced with prospect of a lottery for basic survival in this nation.”

From the Coalition for Equal Quality Education’s (CEQE) Sandra McIntosh’s comments: “CEQE wants to document what happens to the promises made to families of 18 closed schools [in Boston]. We have it on tape. They said they’re going to send your child to better, higher performing schools with resources. We want to see if promises are kept. In the heat of passion, promises are made, but they are not always kept. …What’s wrong with NCLB? As the president said, ‘Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong.’”

What is a pig in a poke?

1. A term dating from the Middle Ages meaning buying something claimed to be a suckling pig in a bag (“poke”) without looking to see what was inside.
2. The Stand For Children ballot question called “promoting excellence in public schools.”

Will it actually:

• Turn good teaching into mindless test prep?
• Cause further narrowing of the curriculum?
• Punish teachers of the neediest students and deter teachers from working with these children?
• Drown principals in pointless paperwork?

Nobody knows!

Stand wants to force school districts to take a new teacher evaluation system that does not yet exist and has not been tried in the real world, and use it to decide on layoffs, transfers, and other critical matters. The system is just beginning to be developed, so nobody knows yet how it’s going to work.

But the New York Times reports a similar system in Tennessee has been a disaster, keeping principals tied up with endless paperwork, sending teacher morale into a tailspin and prompting such insanity as measuring music teachers by a school’s writing scores. [“In Tennessee, Following the Rules for
Evaluations Off a Cliff,” Nov. 6.]

Even Mass. Education Secretary Paul Reville, a big fan of a recently approved Massachusetts teacher evaluation system, thinks we need to find out if it works before we use it the way Stand wants. [State House News Service, Aug. 2.]

So why is Stand in a rush?

In a talk in Colorado last summer, Stand CEO Jonah Edelman described how Stand raised big bucks from rich Illinois business people to beat down teachers unions. Then he laid out his strategy for doing the same in other states. In Massachusetts, he said, “It might be, we have a ballot question on the ballot
and we use it as a lever.” [Aspen Ideas Festival web site.]

What is Stand’s real agenda and who’s driving it? Does it have to do with the surge of money coming to Stand from big corporate foundations? What’s really in that ballot question bag?