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"The rescue of public education must come from the grassroots, from a coalition led by parents and teachers. Such a movement has been taking shape gradually and gained visibility during the 2012 election cycle. The number of education-related campaigns has increased as ed reformers try to entrench their policies in law. In addition to the familiar battles over school funding, there are votes on charter schools, the content of teacher contracts, vouchers, and union rights (the four largest unions in the United States represent teachers and other public sector workers). Disregarded in the past, elections for school boards and superintendents have become major battles. This year's education votes were high-profile within individual states, fiercely fought, and outlandishly expensive; some attracted national attention. Public education supporters won some impressive victories and suffered several bitter disappointments. Here is a review of some pivotal votes, who supported what, and why"

"Chicago teachers are fighting not just for fair pay and decent health care but for a host of things that will improve education for Chicago kids-smaller classes, needed books and teaching materials, comfortable and well-maintained schools. But they're running into a buzz saw of well-organized, well-funded opposition from the massive anti-teacher, pro-corporate education policy world. Teachers don't have the money or the media platform that Wall Street billions and Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get you, which is why they need our help and support. What we're seeing in Chicago is the fallout from Jonah Edelman's hedge fund backed campaign to elect Illinois state legislators who supported an anti-collective bargaining, testing based education proposal giving Edelman the "clear political capability to potentially jam this proposal down [the teachers unions'] throats," political capability he used as leverage to jam an only slightly less awful proposal down their throats. It's a political deal that explicitly targeted Chicago teachers, while trying to make it impossible that they would strike by requiring a 75 percent vote of all teachers, not just those voting, for a strike to be legal. But more than 90 percent of Chicago teachers voted to strike. It's not just Jonah Edelman, though. Rahm Emanuel worked with a tea party group to promote Chicago charter schools and denigrate traditional public school teachers and their unions."

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve "model" bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations-without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a "unique," "unparalleled" and "unmatched" organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org

"During the recent debates over public employees' collective bargaining rights, especially around the Wisconsin protests, I heard a few people argue that Republican governors are intent on destroying public sector unions, at least in part, because union members are more likely to vote - and to vote Democratic."

Theories are like maps, the authors argue. They are "useful in helping us get somewhere." "Rather than attempt to imitate the hard sciences, social scientists would be ... doing what they do best: thinking deeply about what prompts human beings to behave the way they do." This includes gathering data-anecdotes, myths, and other such "soft" insights along with the so-called "hard" ones. It means including direct data, not just indirect test data which we hope "correlates" with reality." It means acknowledging tradeoffs: Do life, liberty, and happiness sometimes clash? Of course, this kind of "soft science" leads to less certainty. But less certainty where certainty doesn't exist is a good thing. One reason we need to stick with even flawed forms of democracy is that there isn't any flawless form! Every form of voting, for example, rests on a bias about whom and what is more important. Anyone studying the gerrymandering of districts in New York state notes that the latest plan makes it likely that a majority of voters will be "out-voted" by a minority when it comes to our state's legislative bodies. Our Constitution rests on similar "gerrymandering"-some voters count more than others.

When the Michigan legislature returns from recess next week, and votes funds for higher education (far more meager than they used to be, but never mind), it will vote on Section 273a, passed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee, which, according to the Lansing State Journal, reads: It is the intent of the legislature that a public university that receives funds in section 236 shall not collaborate in any manner with a nonprofit worker center whose documented activities include coercion through protest, demonstration, or organization against a Michigan business.

Cobble Hill residents and politicians are outraged over the city's decision to move a key vote over a controversial Cobble Hill charter school further out of their back yard into Queens.

Public school teachers have voted overwhelmingly against a six-year contract that proposed the transition to performance-based raises starting in July 2013. Sixty-seven percent of teachers voted against the contract, the Hawaii State Teachers Association announced tonight.

The Board of Regents of the Rhode Island Department of Education voted 5-4 last night in favor of a proposal to allow Achievement First, a nonprofit that has established charter schools throughout New England, to continue plans to bring two corporate charter schools to Providence. City Councilman Bryan Principe hosted a press conference yesterday morning urging the Board of the Regents to postpone the vote. Principe has been a leader in the movement against Achievement First and spoke to the board at last night's meeting. "There is widespread community opposition to this plan," he said. Principe presented a long list of those opposed to Achievement First, including 22 members of the General Assembly, seven members of the Providence City Council and 33 various community, parent and labor organizations.

As if Florida teachers haven't had it hard enough under Gov. Rick Scott's deep cuts in education, now teachers are actually facing fines for helping high school students register to vote.

A city board voted on Thursday night to close 18 schools and eliminate the middle school grades at five others, citing poor performance. The decision drew howls of opposition from hundreds of teachers' union members, parents and students, who gathered in the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High School along with a group that was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Teachers in Louisiana have found themselves on the frontlines of austerity. First, in an unprecedented vote, the Jefferson Parish School Board voted 8-1 to close seven campuses, four of them traditional elementary schools and the rest alternative programs for students struggling academically. The board issued more bad news when it announced it was dropping plans to add an art instruction wing at Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts due to cost concerns. Construction of the wing is a hot-button issue in the area because the proposal to convert Lincoln into a magnet school that would draw students from across the parish was a result of the deliberations leading up to the system's settling a forty-seven-year-old desegregation lawsuit last year.

On Wednesday, members of the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on several controversial Department of Education contracts totaling millions of dollars. But the panel's 13 members won't be able to see the details of the contracts, which the DOE cannot finalize without their approval.

The U.S. House of Representatives took what has become a rare step today: It passed an education bill with broad bipartisan support. The vote, on charter school legislation, was an overwhelming vote of 365 to 54 -but there was still a lot of drama behind the scenes.

Yet another charter school is on the path to unionization after a majority of its teachers voted to seek representation from the United Federation of Teachers.

"NASHVILLE -- The state Senate voted 18-14 Monday night to end 33 years of collective bargaining by teachers in Tennessee."

The Oregon House again postponed a debate and vote on House Bill 2287, which modifies the state charter school law to give developers more rights to appeals and longer contracts.

"High school teachers in Seattle are saying no to the spread of high-stakes standardized tests. On January 10, the staff of Garfield High School voted unanimously to refuse to administer the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test to their ninth-grade students. For two weeks they've held firm, even as the superintendent of schools has threatened them with a 10-day unpaid suspension, and teachers at other schools have joined their boycott."

"On Monday, the city's 4,700 union members are scheduled to vote on the contract. Both sides say they cannot predict the outcome, but either way, what happens here will echo among teachers' unions across the country. If the contract is approved, it could prompt other districts to push for pay-for-performance, by suggesting that merit pay is no longer so symbolic a fight among the rank and file. Newark's deal itself was prompted by recent changes to the state's tenure laws that were once considered unthinkable. And both sides insist that this deal could be a model for union-management collaboration, giving teachers a voice they have often felt was denied in reform. If it fails, beleaguered union leaders could take it as a new sign of strength in contract negotiations - similar, some teachers said, to the example of the Chicago teachers' strike last month."

"When the Florida Board of Education voted this month to set different goals for student achievement in reading and math by race and ethnicity, among other guidelines, the move was widely criticized as discriminatory and harmful to blacks and Hispanics. But the state, which has been required to categorize achievement by racial, ethnic and other groups to the federal government for more than 10 years, intends to stand by its new strategic plan. Education officials say the targets, set for 2018, have been largely misunderstood."