Two PAA shout-outs from NEPC!Michelle Fine and Stan Karp mention PAA in their
critique of a report from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, "Parent power: Grass-roots activism and K-12 education reform":
The Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) and newer networks like Parents Across America (PAA) also advocate locally for reforms, including smaller class size, less testing and authentic parent participation, while challenging many of the policies advocated by the ERAOs. These groups face some of the same dilemmas as those raised by McGuinn and Kelly, but their reform agenda is very different, as they seek system-wide improvement for all, not exit for a few. (p. 4)
Also, PAA was mentioned in the context of the Florida push-back on the parent trigger in another NEPC critique n the the parent trigger itself,
"Missing the Target? The Parent Trigger as a Strategy for Parental Engagement and School Reform" (p. 7).
Moms on the Loose near the DNCThe big to-do this week was the Moms on the Loose from PAA's North Carolina affiliate, Mecklenburg ACTS, headed by PAA founding member Pamela Grundy, challenging the privatizers outside of the Democratic National Convention at two events. One was a screening of the WBD movie, and the other was a "town hall" meeting sponsored by Democrats for Education Reform, where the actual townsfolk were disinvited!
Pam's going to write up a summary for next week's newsletter, but here are some choice news clips:
Pamela's article in the Washington Post Answer Sheet blog
, "Lifelong Democrat ready for fight in Charlotte over school reform. Moms booted from Michelle Rhee's film screening during Democratic ConventionFrom
Huffington Post: Pam Grundy, an activist from Charlotte who founded
a local education group, called the film "a Hollywood fantasy" and said she and others from her group would be outside the theater handing out literature to "set the record straight."
"Don't try this at home. It's an inspiring story of two women coming together to make things better for their kids, but the direction they go in, in taking over their school and turning it into a parent-teacher charter school, is not a realistic way to really improve schools," said Grundy, who is also a founder of the national advocacy group Parents Across America.
"The idea that a charter school is going to magically change everything and just make things better for the kids is just not based in fact," she said. "Charter schools are every so often better than comparable schools, but they're more often worse."
Don't miss Pam's recent PAA blog posts:
Here's another PAAer on WBD in
People's World:Leonie Haimson, a longtime public school parent activist in New York, says actual efforts to use parent trigger laws "have been driven by billionaire-funded supporters of privatization, and have sparked acrimony and division. None of these efforts has actually improved a school." Haimson is a leader of Leonie was also recently interviewed on the parent trigger and the WBD movie on Fair radio.
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