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Teachers and parents both know that a child is more than a test score. That is why more than 70% of public school parents reject a proposal to greatly increase the weight of a single state test score in evaluating teachers, according to a recent poll conducted by Hart Research (PDF). The statewide poll, conducted January 20-23, was taken while discussions were ongoing between NYSUT and the State Education Department around teacher evaluation processes.

Members of the New York State Assembly and Senate, parents and education advocates called for state legislation on Tuesday to give local school advisory panels the power to veto school co-locations in their districts. The proposed legislation would ensure that no school could be co-located with another, reconfigured or moved to a different site unless the community education council for the area approves it.

"The reality is that most parents do not want to close their schools or convert them into charters to be run by private corporations, where they may have even less voice and students fewer rights. They do not want the teachers' union to be destroyed, as it is the only organized, well-financed group acting to keep class sizes from mushrooming out of control and school budgets from further cuts."

"Parent advocate Leonie Haimson wants more New York parents to know that the state has agreed to share sensitive information about their children's education with a national data-sharing system run by inBloom.  While state and city officials have tried to reassure families that privacy is a top priority for them, concerns remain. She answers some of our questions about inBloom Inc."

"In sum, the AP article does not reflect the declared purpose of the survey as evidenced by the survey questions. The parents completing the AP survey were not instructed in the use of the term "high stakes," including the potential, serious outcomes of high stakes testing.  They were also not informed of the high-stakes-testing requirements associated with Common Core. If one considers the survey results separate from the AP article, one sees parents who believe their children are receiving a better education than they did from excellent-yet-underpaid teachers who care about their students.  I dare the Joyce-Foundation-funded AP to print that info."

"Many of those who are driving education policy today are fixed on a certain set of numbers and measurements that we're told are the way to gauge a quality school. But as a parent, that's not really what matters to me about my daughter's education."

Rita Solnet is a Palm Beach County mom and business woman who liked being involved in her son's school. When she saw many things going what she considered the wrong way in public education, she stepped up her activism. She helped get new Palm Beach School Board members elected and she tried to help push the local debate in a new direction. That got her tied to education historian Diane Ravitch, who lately has come out against the accountability systems that Florida and other states have adopted. From there, Solnet helped create the national Parents Across America and most recently helped organize the Save Our Schools rally in Washington D.C. Solnet spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about her efforts, her goals and Matt Damon.

The U.S. Department of Education today announced the award of more than $5 million in grants to operate 19 special education Parent Training and Information (PTI) Centers in 13 states and Puerto Rico.

Several times a year a spate of news reports come out highlighting how the United States has fallen behind other countries in this educational metric or that, followed by lamentation from the media about the sad state of affairs in America's school system. Whether an educational crisis exists or not, news outlets are touching on some real anxieties in the U.S.: a higher percentage of Americans believe that parents are not putting enough pressure on kids to do well in school than 20 other nations surveyed by Pew.

For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don't fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer. I have become used to some parents who just don't want to hear anything negative about their child, but sometimes if you're willing to take early warning advice to heart, it can help you head off an issue that could become much greater in the future.

An open message from a Kansas City teacher to the parents and  teachers of Michigan about John Covington's reign of terror when he was superintendent of  her district's schools. Covington drastically increased the class sizes of certain KC teachers following a model suggested by Bill Gates; this experiment ended, thankfully, when he left the district. Covington was recently appointed the head of Michigan's new Education Achievement Authority to run that state's struggling schools, with the power to cancel union contracts and override duly elected school board members.

There is a fierce battle over whether an Achievement First charter school will open in Providence. RI-Can and the other Astroturf groups funded by the Walton Foundation and the hedge fund crowd are pushing hard, promoting the spread of this chain of charter schools. As a public service, we are featuring the eloquent and stirring first-person accounts of two courageous and eloquent NYC parents, May Taliaferrow and Leslie-Ann Byfield, talking about what their children and other children endured at this charter school, known for its strict disciplinary policies and harsh treatment of students with disabilities. For more on Achievement First, see also this NY Post story, and this Facebook page. The following videos, taken by Norman Scott of GEM, are outtakes from the terrific movie, The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.

Parent involvement touches all aspects of education, affecting children, teachers and schools. Groups of people get together to agree disagreeably, and invent ways to encourage more of it. As a teacher, I know only what I see, and from what I see, the whole debate seems a little pointless.

The recent reorganization of New Orleans schools offers a unique opportunity to examine differences in the policies and practices of charter and traditional schools. RAND researchers surveyed principals, teachers, and parents in both types of schools. They found higher levels of satisfaction and a perception of more choices among charter school parents. This raises the question of whether citywide school choice is equally accessible and navigable by all.

May Taliaferrow, Former parent at Achievement First, Brooklyn, NY starts out as an avid charter school supporter but finds parents are shut out and children are subjected to severe discipline and ends up telling her son how sorry she was for putting him the school.

"Korea's phenomenal educational performance has little to do with teachers. It is entirely about parents. Parents who were weaned on a Confucian ethic which echoed for centuries ― education is the route to success and status. "

When the La Cima Elementary Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, gave out its family survey in February, administrators were thrilled that about 95 percent of families who responded were satisfied or highly satisfied with the three-year-old school. But that survey was not counted by the Department of Education in its annual progress report. The city uses a standardized environment survey that it distributes to parents and teachers every March, and La Cima refused to use it.

The Department of Education will replicate other cities' parent training programs and start measuring how well schools engage families, Chancellor Dennis Walcott announced tonight.

"Leonie Haimson is fed up with the line that the mainstream media has taken about education controversies. Reporters usually think that every protest is organized by the unions, defending their self-interest, and they are warring with high-minded reformers. She says this is balderdash! (Sorry, Leonie, my word, not yours.)   If parents hold a protest against high-stakes testing and against test-based teacher evaluations (which causes more time to be devoted to testing), most reporters will say the union made them do it, the union doesn't want to be held accountable.   Well, guess what? The unions are not leading the Opt Out movement. Many teachers support it, because they know how pointless the new tests are, but the great majority of people leading the movement are parents. They don't want their children to be pressured by fear of the Big Standardized Test, they don't want them to be ranked and labeled, they don't want them to hate school because of the endless test prep."

"The latest progress reports for New York City elementary and middle schools came out last week, and many parents are baffled to see some of the city's top-performing schools getting "C's" and "B's." Proponents say, the "A" to "F" grading system is one of the best ways to get parents to pay attention, but critics say that the city's over emphasis on test performance skews the grades, making them unreliable for judging the quality of a school. If these progress reports are not reliable, what is the purpose of them?"