Some great ideas from the Grassroots Education Movement

The Grassroots Education Movement is the group behind the film "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman" that defends public education and teachers, and work to defend public education.

There site has some great resources and links about public education and the education reform movement that is currently sweeping the nation. All teachers should visit the site and read the information.

Below is a quote from their web site detailing more about them (GEMNYC):

The Grassroots Education Movement (GEMNYC) educates, organizes, and mobilizes educators, parents, students and communities to defend public education. Too many current corporate and government policies seek to underfund, undermine and privatize our public school system. GEM advocates around issues dealing with the equality and quality of public educational services as well as the rights of teachers and school workers. These issues include the incessant push for charter schools, the attack on union rights, the focus on high-stakes standardized testing, school closures, and the failure to address the racism and inequality that exists within our schools. As the attacks on public education and teachers grow more vicious, the collective organization of those who directly face these attacks at the grassroots level becomes all the more essential, and in fact constitutes the most effective potential resistance. GEM advocates for a positive vision of education reform by building alliances with other activist groups and organizing and helping coordinate the struggle at the grassroots school and community level, with a focus on school-level organizing. 

Our vision of a fully funded, democratic, public education system that is accountable to the public it is intended to serve includes the following real reforms:
Reform #1: Smaller Class Sizes
Reform #2: Excellent Community Public Schools for ALL Children
Reform #3: More Teaching – Less Testing
Reform #4: Parent and Teacher Empowerment and Leadership
Reform #5: Equitable Funding for ALL Schools
Reform #6: Anti-Racist Education Policies
Reform #7: Culturally Relevant Curriculum
Real Reform #8: Expand Pre Kindergarten and Early Intervention Programs
Real Reform #9: Qualified and Experienced Educators and Educational Leaders
Real Reform #10: Democratic and Social Justice Unionism

I have to agree with their reforms listed above. Smaller class sizes, community based schools, less testing, more empowerment of teachers, equitable funding, and more intervention programs will definitely help our students learn and succeed better. 

What do you think?

My take on some issues in education right now

Education is at the forefront of the media, political battles, legislation and everywhere you turn. There are some major issues being discussed and some are valid, some not so much. Education is a very dynamic, individualized, NOT-one-size-fits-all issue that needs real support and change. Here is my take on the big issues:

1. Teacher attacks - stop attacking teachers! We are not the cause of everything bad in the world. We are not responsible for everything about a student. We work hard, long hours. We act as surrogate parents, psychologists, social workers, mentors, and teachers. Yes we get summers off...from our main job. Most of us teach summer school or have another summer job to make ends meet. We can NOT do it all. Educating our children is a TEAM effort, that needs the community, schools, and parents involved.

2. Standardized Testing - I have no problem with giving students benchmark, standardized test occasionally. However, to say that these tests will be used to evaluate (and decide pay and firing of teachers) is ridiculous. Standardized testing is one way to assess PART of a student's learning and abilities. It can be useful to find areas that need to be addressed. But it is not the be-all-end-all of student, or teacher, assessment.

3. "Education Reform" - what a mess this is. Corporations and Politicians thinking that they know more about education than educators. There is a motivation behind much of education reform that is all about money. More standardized testing, textbooks and curriculum lead to more money for many companies. More charter schools equal more money for the companies that run them. Bad evaluation methods of teachers, tying teacher evaluations to standardized testing, and attacking teachers work to push good teachers out, and get them replaced by new, temporary, lower paid teachers. If we want true education reform, we need to have educators working on the plans, not politicians and private corporations. Read more here.

4. Literacy - this is one of the main issue that affects our students' ability to learn. We have students entering school who have never been read to, or taught anything about reading and they are way behind. Poverty and family life contribute to this issue, with many students having parents who don't/can't read or don't speak English. We need to improve the reading skills of our students so that they can read textbooks, web sites, and other educational materials and learn from them.

5. Poverty - Poverty must be addressed to help our students, and schools, succeed. I wrote more about it here.

6. Student Learning - students need to learn certain skills and concepts. They will not learn these from more testing. They will not learn these from canned curriculum. They will learn them from experienced educators doing innovative, interactive projects and lessons in the classroom. These Skills are vital for students to be successful in the future. What politicians and businesses want to do will not teach these skills to students, they will just teach them to take tests, and hate education.

What do you think about all the issues affecting public education today?



Related:

Who's responsible for failing students/schools? Everyone!

Assessing Student Learning - do it like assessing someone in their job

Musings on education reform

Educational Issues in Connecticut - what a mess!

Why Teachers Like Us Support Unions

Some Common Education Myth's Debunked

Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional Systems? Fix the system to support the teachers.

Just the Facts Please! The facts about "education reform" from NEA Today

Infographic - consequences of teaching to the test