questadmin

Massachusetts Parents United: Old Wine in an Empty Bottle

by

Read about Mass. Parents United. Who are they? The state director was former state director for Families for Excellent Schools. Funders? The Walton Foundation and the Longfield Foundation, which also funded Great Schools. Members? They say 7000, but what exactly does “member” mean? Might just mean signing a questionnaire outside the Stop and Shop, where paid staff were canvassing on election day. Lots of questions.

http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/2017/7/12/massachusetts-parents-united-old-wine-new-bottle/

Cloaking Inequity: Charter Schools: Who Is Working Together to Improve Them?

by

The NEA just adopted a policy that lays out three criteria charter schools must meet to provide students with the support and learning environments they deserve: (1) charter schools should only be authorized by a local and democratically accountable authorizing entity; (2) there must be empirical assessment of how a new charter school will serve to improve the local public system before any charter enters a community; and (3) charter schools must comply with the same safeguards and standards that apply to neighborhood public schools such as “open meetings and public records laws, prohibitions against for-profit operations or profiteering, and the same civil rights, employment, labor, health and safety laws and staff qualification and certification requirements.”

http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/charter-schools-working

Seeing Good: My Mea Culpa to the Mason School

by

A spot on reflection on the deeply flawed Build BPS meetings. “I want improved school buildings for my children (and for all children). But I also want to know that the process is one built not on the mere appearance of consensus – in which five strangers ‘agree’ on abstract recommendations – but rather on the deep institutional knowledge embedded in school communities.”

https://scholar.harvard.edu/jmnoonan/blog/seeing-good-my-mea-culpa-mason-school