CPS promoted, preserved & protected public education at an urgent time when democratic values are under attack, with three critical priority campaigns & our ongoing advocacy:
- CPS played a leadership role in the Fund Our Future Coalition to pass the Student Opportunity Act and increase Massachusetts’ public school funding by $1.5 billion:
- CPS Executive Director, Lisa Guisbond, president of the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, collaborated with our partners in the Fund our Future on a successful joint campaign to support a substantial increase in school funding.
- CPS members and supporters urged legislators to overhaul the foundation budget funding formula and completed e-advocacy and in-person lobby days at the State House to support the funding bill’s passage.
- The passage of the Student Opportunity Act is an historic commitment to upholding public educational equity and quality for every student in the Commonwealth.
- CPS’s ongoing campaign actions against local and statewide charter school expansion helped prevent harm to traditional public schools:
- Joined forces with grassroots advocates and helped to prevent a public school building from being given away to a charter school in New Bedford.
- Endorsed legislation for increased charter school transparency and local accountability, testified at State House hearings, and educated and engaged CPS members in support of our democratically accountable public schools.
- Testified against Innovation Partnership Zones that remove local democratic control.
- CPS’s Privatization Policy Circle published the first in a series of fact sheets on charter schools to inform and support our grassroots activists and campaigns. This first fact sheet focused on the Alma del Mar Charter expansion controversy in New Bedford.
- CPS’s ongoing campaign against high-stakes standardized testing included promoting alternative ways to assess school quality and student learning:
- CPS testified before the MA Board of Elementary & Secondary Education in April calling for the deletion of misleading information on opting out of MCAS and for holding 10th graders harmless after students revealed a racist question on the ELA exam.
- Continued collecting and publishing stories of those impacted by the high-stakes MCAS in our “Life Under MCAS” blog
- CPS’s Testing Policy Circle created and disseminated clear, easy-to-understand and well-designed fact sheets on high-stakes testing and the impact on students of color.
- Assisted and supported individual parent and student activists with opting out of MCAS.
- Supported and promoted exciting progress on alternative assessments by endorsing the work of the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment.
- Strengthened CPS advocacy, visibility and grassroots activist education:
- CPS published commentaries and letters-to-the-editor in CommonWealth Magazine, Boston Globe and Boston Herald on testing and accountability reform and charter school expansion.
- CPS’s Executive Director was quoted regularly in national and local media, including Newsweek, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, WBUR, WGBH, Masslive, the Bay State Banner, and Atlantic magazine.
- Educated CPS supporters about policy news and legislative action alerts through regular “News You Can Use” e-newsletters, and social media.
- Hosted a legislative breakfast at the State House to introduce our 2019-2020 legislative agenda to freshman legislators and friends.
- Hosted local house parties in 2019-2020 to increase membership and hear from members about their major concerns.
