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Anthony Cody Announces Network for Public Education »

Breaking News: New Group to Oppose Corporate Reforms

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2013 //

Dear Friends,

It is time to organize to support our children, our schools, and our educators against the well-funded attacks on them.

Please join me and a group of education leaders from across the country in building a movement for improving and strengthening our schools with research-based reforms, not fads and sanctions.

Today we announce the creation of the Network for Public Education. We invite you to join as an individual. We invite you to join as an organization. We will create a huge social network of parents, students, teachers, administrators, school board members, and all others who believe in public education and sane educational policy that focuses on a full and rich education for all children.

Diane

Here is the press release:

For Immediate Release
March 7, 2013

Contacts:
Anthony Cody, 707-459-2147, 510-917-9231 (cell) Anthony_cody@hotmail.com
Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329, leonie@classsizematters.org

Today marks the public launch of a new network devoted to the defense and improvement of public education in the US. Led by renowned education historian, Diane Ravitch, the Network for Public Education will bring together grassroots activists and organizations from around the country, and endorse candidates for office, with the common goal of protecting and strengthening our public schools.

Diane Ravitch said, “The Network for Public Education will give voice to the millions of parents, educators, and other citizens who are fed up with corporate-style reform. We believe in community-based reform, strengthening our schools instead of closing them, respecting our teachers and principals instead of berating them, educating our children instead of constantly testing them. Our public schools are an essential democratic institution. We look forward to working with friends and allies in every state and school district who want to preserve and improve public education for future generations.”

Our nation’s schools are at a crossroads. Wealthy individuals are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into state and local school board races, often into places where they do not reside, to elect candidates intent on undermining and privatizing our public schools. The Network for Public Education will collaborate with other groups and organizations to strengthen our public schools in states and districts throughout the nation, share information and research about what works and what doesn’t work, and endorse and grade candidates based on our shared commitment to the well-being of our children, our society, and our public schools. We will help candidates who work for evidence-based reforms and who oppose high-stakes testing, mass school closures, the privatization of our public schools and the outsourcing of core academic functions to for-profit corporations.

Renee Moore, former Mississippi Teacher of the Year, said, “One of the greatest gifts the U.S. has given to the world is the promise of quality public education. It is also an unfulfilled promise. Public education is a critical part of America’s legacy, and the key to our future. We must defend and constantly improve it.”

According to Anthony Cody, retired California teacher and columnist for Education Week: “As a teacher in Oakland I saw the effects of our obsession with tests first hand. Our students are learning less, and losing the chance to think for themselves as we put more and more pressure on them to perform well on tests. It is time for the millions of us who know better to challenge those who have put our schools on this path. This Network will allow us to learn from and support one another as we push for real school change.”

Leonie Haimson, NYC parent advocate and head of Class Size Matters, said: “With all the billionaire cash trying to buy elections, we need to amass people power to ensure that individuals who care about preserving and strengthening our public schools are elected to positions of power. As the recent Los Angeles school board election shows, when we are organized we can overcome the forces of the privateers and the profiteers, intent on pillaging and dismantling our public schools.”

According to Arizona parent activist and director of Voices for Education, Robin Hiller: “No school was ever improved by closing it. Every community should have good public schools, and we believe that public officials have a solemn responsibility to improve public schools, not close or privatize them.”

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas stated “This new network will seek to empower communities nationwide to unite to be more influential than the powerful. The network will also be an important vehicle for the latest data and research on the strengths and weaknesses of reform fads espoused by a multitude of talking heads.”

Phyllis Bush, a retired teacher from Indiana, said “Public schools are under assault in this country. Now more than ever it is imperative that concerned citizens unite to save the public school system. Our group, Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education, and other grassroots groups helped to elect Glenda Ritz to become our Superintendent of Public Instruction, a huge victory against rampant and destructive education policies. With the creation of the Network for Public Education, we will reach out to others across the nation to fulfill the promise of public education.”

Added board member and Alabama education activist Larry Lee, “From my view, a lot more “ed reform” is because of the love of money, not the love of children. The result is that kids have become a very poor rope in a political tug of war. The only way to turn this tide is with the collective voices of the American public saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”

The Network invites individuals to join as members and welcomes other organizations to become our allies, to fight with us to preserve and strengthen our public schools.

The group’s website is www.networkforpubliceducation.org
and the Twitter feed is at https://twitter.com/NetworkPublicEd

###

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Categories Closing schools, Parents, Privatization, Support for public schools, Teachers

38 Comments Comments are closed.

« Older Comments
  1. spacer Ang says:
    March 7, 2013 at 10:02 pm

    I am in and proud to be a member!
    Great work every one.
    Thank you.
    Now, how can I help?
    Ang
    PS: idea…sicker for window, bumper etc…

  2. spacer Peace says:
    March 7, 2013 at 10:03 pm

    YES

  3. spacer Lance Fialkoff says:
    March 8, 2013 at 12:33 am

    I’m sure you have many pressing priorities as a new organization, but I would strongly recommend that you devote considerable attention to actively engaging US high school students in the process of reversing the privatization of public education and ending the obsession with standardized testing. Students have intimate knowledge of what really works in the classroom and doesn’t. They have borne the brunt of the testing regime and understand better than anyone the horrors of obsessive standardized testing. They should (and most want to) take ownership for the quality of their OWN education, and now have an opportunity to do so. As educators, we should recognize this as the “teachable moment” of a lifetime for young citizens and we ought to seize the day (Carpe Diem!) Please have a Network youth wing (by whatever name). I hope you will help educate and coordinate the actions of young activists nationally, provide them with first rate resources to organize peaceful, effective actions, and access to advice from wise, sympathetic adult educators. To do otherwise would ignore perhaps the most powerful constituency for authentic reform, as well as the main victims of our misguided policies of recent years.

  4. spacer szemelman says:
    March 8, 2013 at 11:52 am

    At www.teachersspeakup.com We’re pleased to complement this effort by helping teachers tell their positive classroom stories to the public, to build support for this more direct advocacy.

  5. spacer M. Croul says:
    March 9, 2013 at 8:57 pm

    It’s about time we join together to defeat the Michelle Rhee’s of the world. Public ed. exists to further our democratic values. Now all that’s needed is money to run ads to educate the public and support those politicians who believe like we do.
    Let me know what I can do to get the process moving!

    • spacer dianerav says:
      March 10, 2013 at 8:30 am

      M. Crout, join and we will plan together.

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