Shutting out parents, and how it must stop!

Education Week just published an article I co-authored with Julie Woestehoff of Chicago’s PURE called Shutting Out Parents: Obama's Disappointing Blueprint for Reform, about how the US Department of Education has completely excluded parents and our ideas from their education agenda, including the need for smaller classes and more parental involvement.

The only instance in which parent involvement in decisionmaking is mentioned in Duncan’s entire blueprint for ESEA is to require that the parents of Native American children be included in the design of programs at the school level. (!!)

Though the U.S. Department of Education calls many of their proposals “innovation,” we see them as representing large-scale experiments on our children—experiments lacking a foundation in research and implemented without informed parental consent—something that would never be allowed in fields such as medicine.

It is a shortened version of a letter we sent last month to the President and Congress, signed by parent leaders across America.

Please send your own message to DC policymakers, by signing our NEW petition to Obama and Congress, Put the Parent Voice Back in Public Education, if you agree.