The emerging parent union and trigger movements are directing our dialogue toward a question too few of us are asking: Who has the authority over the child? To that, Connecticut Parent’s Union leader Gwen Samuel has added that a parent’s love and responsibility for the child cannot be equaled in[Read More…]
Parent Empowerment
Understanding our two education reform movements
Two parallel and at times interdependent education reform movements are occurring in Florida. They differ in how they’re attempting to improve public education and in the political responses they’re generating. The largest and most contentious effort is trying to improve public education by giving school districts more power over personnel[Read More…]
Insurgents, or engineers
Andy Rotherham today gives us a look at a few examples where progressive-minded teachers are acting as change-agents within their unions. And, surely, the news is promising. But these “insurgents,” as Rotherham calls them, are still mostly acting as engineers tinkering with the machinery that drives a top-down model of public[Read More…]
Parent-trigger backers want more from Weingarten
Parent trigger advocates are applying more presure on AFT president Randi Weingarten to pay more penance after an AFT document surfaced in Connecticut that detailed a textbook plan on killing “trigger” legislation. Notably, prominent California Democrats and parent-trigger backers Gloria Romero and Ben Austin have written Weingarten suggesting that simply distancing[Read More…]
Rotherham on choice and empowerment
Andy Rotherham spent his weekly real estate on Time.com describing his method of choosing a school for his children. Of particular note to redefinED are his comments on choice, equity and empowerment: … the amount of choice is still limited by administrators (who alone get to decide, for instance, whether[Read More…]
The irony of the Save Our Schools rally
by Doug Tuthill and Adam Emerson Thirty-nine years ago, author and activist Jonathan Kozol reflected on an enterprise that began when a dozen parents of the children he taught in Boston convened in his kitchen to plan their own school outside the traditional public education system. “We were very much aware[Read More…]
School choice and the case for equity
Over at Dropout Nation, RiShawn Biddle has explored how school choice activists, particularly those on the left, can re-energize the legal case for equity in education spending. He writes, “If choice activists and civil libertarian groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union successfully take up such moves, it would[Read More…]
The rationale for choice and the greater good
The Sunday New York Times featured a front page story on the rise of charter schools in the suburbs and quoted one charter school opponent, Matthew Stewart, in Millburn, N.J., as stating, “In suburban areas like Millburn, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the local school district is not doing its job. So what’s[Read More…]