The SF Bay Area Progressive Education Network (PEN) is sponsoring an “Ignite!” evening at Christa McAuliffe School, 12211 Titus Ave., Saratoga, April 25th, 7-9 pm.  The group will explore the questions: What is Progressive Education? How can it make a difference? and Why is it Important?  through  ten, 5 minute talks about progressive practices.  Among the participants is Judy Voets, one of the founding teachers of the Open Classroom where August to June was filmed Others include Tom Little, President of PEN and Dale Jones, a progressive public school administratoe currently working at  Discovery Charter School, where Constructivism is an important guiding practice.  The talks will be followed by an opportunity to meet new people, ask questions, and learn more about Progressive Education in the Bay Area.  A suggested donation of $5 makes this  true bargain! Read more →

March 14 at 11 am Denver students are converging on the steps of the Colorado State Capital as a protest against standardized testing and its ramifications.  They ask that the Colorado State Legislature cut standardized testing instead of cutting the arts, music, PE, classroom resources, or closing schools. Even if you can’t join them, you can go to their Facebook page and offer encouragement! Read more →

There  are 12,000 signatures so far on this petition, started by Carol Burris, of the New York Principals.  This group’s first effort was a letter to the governor stating their position against high stakes testing, signed by 1536 principals!  That’s one third of all the principals in New York State!  If you are a New Yorker, you don’t have to be a principal to add your signature to Carol’s petition.  If you are from another state, can you find a principal with the courage to do what New York’s have done? Read more →

The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has a letter you can sign if you think violent media should not be marketed to children. Read more →

The education section of Brown’s State Of The State address is printed in full below, because it is so exciting to see a politician exercise his power to make the changes we have been working on for years. Is it possible he watched the DVD of August To June we sent him? Write him a thank you note! “In the right order of things, education—the early fashioning of character and the formation of conscience—comes before legislation. Nothing is more determinative of our future than how we teach our children. If we fail at this, we will sow growing social chaos and inequality that no law can rectify. In California’s public schools, there are six million students, 300,000 teachers—all subject to tens of thousands of laws and regulations. In addition to the teacher in the classroom, we have a principal in every school, a superintendent and governing board for each school district. Then we have the State Superintendent and the State Board of Education, which makes rules and approves endless waivers—often of laws which you just passed. Then there is the Congress which passes laws like “No Child Left Behind,” and finally the Federal Department of Education, whose rules, audits and fines reach into every classroom in America, where sixty million children study, not six million. Add to this the fact that three million California school age children speak a language at home other than English and more than two million children live in poverty. And we have a funding system that is overly complex, bureaucratically driven and deeply inequitable. That is the state of affairs today. The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child. We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children. But as the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” This year, as you consider new education laws, I ask you to consider the principle of Subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is the idea that a central authority should Read more →

Imagine if the entire staff of a large urban high school said NO to standardized testing. Would it be the oooomph that would get other teachers to take that risky step en masse? The teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle have taken that first step. The more people who applaud their move, the more likely it is that other school staffs will be emboldened. Sign this petition to show your support! Then consider writing or calling José Banda, Seattle Superintendent of Schools, who sent a letter to his principals threatening disciplinary action against teachers who refuse to participate in high stakes testing. Phone: (206) 252-0180 Fax: (206) 252-0209 Email: superintendent@seattleschools.org Here is my letter, which you are free to use as a template! Dear Superintendant Banda, Instead of punishing the brave teachers in your district standing up for their convictions and the best interests of their students, you should be joining them in protesting a system that is hurting all students, those who score well, and those who score badly. Where is your sense of outrage at all the misdirected funds that you could be using to give a hand up to struggling students and enrichments to all? Teachers and educators across America are applauding the bravery of these teachers. You could be another hero, or you can make martyrs of them, but you can’t weaken their message: it is time for people who love children and teaching to take a stand against a testing regime that is detrimental to both! Read more →

Donna Yates Mace, Bonnie Cunard and Stefanie Rysdahl Fuhr have come up with a plan to make our voices more effective:   Starting December 21, Contact the White House weekly at 202-456-1111 on your state’s designated day! Message:Give all students the same education your girls are getting! Abandon Race to the Top and stop privatizing public schools. (or your version thereof)MONDAY Alabama  Alaska  Arizona  Arkansas  California  Colorado  Connecticut  Delaware   Florida   Georgia TUESDAY   Hawaii   Idaho   Illinois   Indiana   Iowa   Kansas   Kentucky   Louisiana   Maine   Maryland WEDNESDAY Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey THURSDAY  New Mexico  New York  North Carolina  North Dakota  Ohio  Oklahoma  Oregon  Pennsylvania  Rhode Island  South Carolina FRIDAY  South Dakota  Tennessee  Texas  Utah  Vermont  Virginia  Washington  West Virginia  Wisconsin  Wyoming  Washington, D.C. The Twitter hashtag for this action is #StopRttT  The quote below comes from the Stop RttT Facebook page.  I have shortened it somewhat and added a few words of my own. “What is ‘Race to the Top’?” “RttT is an initiative from the Obama administration that allows states to extend the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate that ALL children be working at grade level by the 2014. States that accepted RttT agreed (along with many other things) to evaluate teachers using student test scores as part of the evaluation and provide more charter schools as a parent ‘choice’.” Rather than encouraging innovation and meaningful teaching, RttT encourages “a decline in the quality of education in our public schools AND corporations lining up to write tests, new curriculum, and open charter school chains…as RttT provides a way for the monies designated for public education to go to the accounts of corporations that are joining the education bandwagon. Parents must speak out now! Teachers and administrators must speak out now! America must speak out now! STOP THE RACE TO THE TOP!”   Read more →