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PAA Action News
Aug. 1, 2013


Welcome to PAA Action News, the information and action newsletter of Parents Across America.
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PAA Action Alert

North Carolina's Moral Mondays making waves!

Activists, including members of PAA affiliate Mecklenburg ACTS, have helped make North Carolina's "Moral Monday" weekly demonstrations the talk of the nation.

The 13th Moral Monday event took place on July 29th and was the largest ever, bringing together up to 10,000 people to protest a number of ALEC-inspired legislative changes in North Carolina. Among the highlighted issues were budget and salary cuts for the state's schools.

Don't miss the new blog post on the event by PAA founding member and leader of Mecklenburg ACTS Pamela Grundy. More below in PAA News.

Lots of folks around the U.S. are looking at Moral Mondays as an effective model for organizing around education and other issues.

Democracy in Education Convention coming to Madison WI

If you are anywhere near Madison, Wisconsin, next week, consider checking out the Democracy Convention, a series of nine convenings on various topics including education.

PAA co-founder Julie Woestehoff will be a part of the opening plenary panel for the Education for Democracy sessions. The plenary is scheduled from 9 - 10:30 am on Wednesday, August 7.

This would be a great opportunity to meet up with a PAA leader to learn more about PAA. You can contact Julie directly at pure@pureparents.org.   

PAA and PAAers in the News

 
More on Moral Mondays

This photo of PAA's Pamela Grundy and her husband, Peter Wong, was featured in the Charlotte Observer's coverage of last Monday's protest (see story above).

PAA co-founder Pamela Grundy and husband Peter Wong at North Carolina Moral Monday protest
 

Philly District cancels parent input


The Philadelphia Public School Notebook reports that public school officials there cancelled a series of meetings to gather parent input into the content of school report cards after PAA co-founder Helen Gym and others attending the first meeting questioned why the district was so concerned about school report cards in the midst of a systemwide meltdown.   

Helen Gym

 

"What the District clearly did not hear [at Monday's meeting] is that there is a tremendous lack of trust between the community and the direction the District is going in right now," said Helen Gym, an activist with Parents United for Public Education.

 

"Why is this such a high priority for the District?" said Gym. "They should be talking to us about the beginning of school, about the resources we need. Instead, they want to have a narrow conversation about data inputs on the report card. ... It's really insulting, I think, to parents who deeply care about what will happen in September."

    
Join us!

If you share our overall goals of progressive, positive education reform and more parent input in education policy making, we invite you to affiliate with us if you are an existing group, or to form a new PAA chapter. The more of us there are, the stronger our voice will be at every level. Here's how!
PAA Chapter and Affiliate News
          
PAA-Atlanta's Kimberly Brooks
PAA blog post on Georgia's opting our of PARCC

PAA-Atlanta chapter leader Kimberly Brooks is glad that Georgia is opting out of PARCC Common Core tests, but she wonders what will take the place of these assessments.

Kimberly writes,  

High stakes testing caused 500,000 students in the Atlanta Public Schools System to be passed through school, ignoring the value of quality teaching, into educational hardship since NCLB started to measure academic achievement though standardized tests.

I've looked into the eyes of a child that could barely read but passed the CRCT and wondered why their English teacher failed them. They don't understand. They become angry and confused. Their values become misplaced. Students are stressed trying to focus on passing tests that someone miles away, lacking the educational qualifications to even create this test, gave them versus the teacher that's in the class day after day.

Read the rest of Kimberly's blog post here. 
 
PAA Blog Highlights

Keep up with our blog for more news and commentary on public education from the parents' point of view.

For more....
If you have questions, comments, suggestions or stories to share, please e-mail us at info@parentsacrossamerica.org or visitwww.parentsacrossamerica.org.

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