A good week to  

contact Congress at home!

Congress will be out next week for the Memorial Day holiday. This gives us another great opportunity to reach our Senators and Representatives in their home offices, which is sometimes easier than trying to reach them in D.C.

We believe that there may be some movement on ESEA after Congress comes back from the Memorial Day break, and that there is an intention to get a full Senate vote on the "Every Child Succeeds Act" which passed out of the Senate education committee in April.  

If the Senate is able to pass their bill, the House may then vote on something similar, since we understand that their version of ESEA, HR 5, is DOA in the Senate.  

PAA has been urging you to contact your US representatives about ESEA for what seems like years....and there is a laundry list of issues and concerns PAA would like to see addressed in a new federal education law. You can read our full ESEA position paper here and see our chart comparing our positions with Senate proposals here, though the latter is not current to the most recent amendments. We also highly recommend this excellent summary from activist educator Mercedes Schneider. 

 
For today, we'll just remind you to ask your senators to co-sponsor S. 1025, which changes the annual testing mandate to a grade-span requirement. You can read our letter to all 100 Senators on the subject here - feel free to use any part of it!

We will have a more comprehensive updated message on ESEA reauthorization for you soon.