PAA has endorsed the Local School Council (LSC) model of parent empowerment. You can find out a lot more about LSCs by joining a webinar hosted by Education Week and featuring PAA's interim executive director Julie Woestehoff, a veteran Chicago LSC member and long-time LSC trainer and advocate.  

Sign up here for the webinar, which will take place on Monday, February 9, at 2 pm Eastern time. 

Please note that, while the Walton Family Foundation is listed as the underwriter for the webinar's content, we have been assured that they have no editorial control over the content.  

We are also excited about our upcoming webinar building the great session we had at our July 2014 conference on the topic of Race,Poverty and Education. PAA Board member Nate Harris Skyped in Dr. Paul Thomas of Furman University for this session. Dr. Thomas blogs at "Radical Scholarship" and has published many important  books on the corporate takeover of education, parental choice, teaching and learning, etc.

Register here for this important event. We want to thank the NEA for hosting our webinar.

Looking forward to seeing lots of friends at the NPE conference in Chicago. PAA will offer a workshop on the Impact of Race and Poverty on Education. We also hope to have a PAA get-together as the NPE conference gets underway. Register here if you have not already done so. 

We have set tentative dates for our annual conference in DC - July 21-24, 2015. Pencil us in! 

Our wonderful PAA co-founder, Helen Gym, has made it official- she's running for Philadelphia City Council.

According to the Daily Pennsylvanian,

 

"Public education and Asian-American activist and 1993 College and 1996 GED graduate Helen Gym will run in the Democratic City Council at-large elections that will take place Nov. 3, according to the Philadelphia City Paper.

 

"Gym's decision to run comes just five days after Councilman Jim Kenney announced his resignation from city council on Jan. 20 in order to run for mayor. With an empty seat, at least one new at-large Council member will have to be elected this year."

 

While PAA's non-profit status prevents us from endorsing or supporting individual candidates for public office, we can say that we are very proud of all of our members who have stepped up to run for public office, and our amazing co-founders who have won - including Seattle school board member Sue Peters and Durham, NC, school board member Natalie Beyer.

We'll keep you posted on Helen's progress.

PAA board of directors member publishes editorial

Pamela Grundy, PAA's board treasurer, just published an excellent editorial, "Moving beyond test and punish," in the Charlotte (NC) News-Observer.

Written with Janna Siegel Robertson, the opinion piece states:

The current spate of over-testing is the direct and inevitable result of testing mandates enacted at both federal and state levels. The situation will improve only when those mandates change.

The editorial points out five key problems with standardized testing and suggests four priorities for addressing those problems.  

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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