June 11, 2015 Dear Friends, Our letter urging the Mayor and the Chancellor to expand the capital plan and appoint a Commission to improve the efficiency of school planning and siting has 16 Council members signed on, in addition to the Public Advocate, the UFT President and many parent leaders. Please check the letter below […]
June 4, 2015 Dear Friends, As you know, NYC public schools are badly overcrowded and becoming more so every day. The city’s capital plan for schools is underfunded by DOE’s own admission, and if not expanded will likely lead to even worse overcrowding. The need for more schools is especially true as the Mayor is […]
April 20, 2015 Dear Friends, 1. Please remember to sign up for our Skinny award dinner June 9, where we will be honoring the leaders of NY’s historic test refusal movement: NYSAPE, Change the Stakes, and NYC Opt Out. For more information and to buy your tickets, check out this link: http://twitthat.com/wii20 2. Today’s NY […]
May 11, 2015 Dear Friends, 1. Our “Skinny” award dinner this year will be held on Tuesday June 9, and will honor the parent organizations that led NY’s historic testing opt-out movement: NY State Allies for Education, Change the Stakes and NYC Opt Out. The dinner will includes a four course dinner with wine, and […]
April 26, 2015 Dear Friends, Tomorrow, Saturday April 25, I will be moderating a panel on student privacy and the perils of ed tech at the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago. I will speak about how federal privacy laws have been unacceptably weakened by the US Department of Education, and how parent and […]
April 20, 2015 Dear Friends, As you may have heard, a huge number of kids opted out of the ELA exams last week throughout NY State; the unofficial count so far is more than 183,000 with 72% of districts reporting. Many teachers reported difficult, confusing reading passages on our blog with ambiguous questions, sometimes many […]
April 16, 2015 Dear Friends, 1. Today (Thursday, April 16, 2015) I’ll be on the national public radio show, To The Point at 2PM EST & Inside City Hall on NY1 at 7 & 10 PM EST talking about testing and opting out. Please listen and watch! 2. This week, the opt-out movement reached historic levels across the […]
April 2, 2015 Dear Friend, 1. On Tuesday night, a state budget bill was approved that doubles down on high-stakes testing and removes any local input– with student “growth scores” on the state exams linked to teacher ratings in a uniform evaluation system. Teachers must do well in terms of student scores to achieve an […]
March 31, 2015 Dear Friend, Please call your legislators right now, and urge them to vote NO on any budget that ties education aid to teacher evaluation, and teacher evaluation to test scores. Find your Assemblymember here and your Senator here. It appears that Cuomo’s budget bill doubles-down or triples-down on testing in the following ways: Teachers could […]
March 25, 2015 Dear Reader , Update from Albany on the budget negotiations: According to Speaker Carl Heastie, there will be no deal in the budget on a voucher-like private school tax credit giveaway that could yield huge financial benefits to billionaires and corporations but drain state revenue of $100 million. Raising the charter cap will likely not be […]
Please join us for a virtual Class Size Briefing this Sunday June 28th, where we will speak about the changes to the class size law, point out flaws in the DOE's proposed plan for next year, and provide everyone with strategies for advocating for smaller classes for all NYC students!
Sign the petition asking for a moratorium on the use of AI until rigorous safeguards are established to protect student privacy, learning and the environment.
Click to see our presentation!
Talk out of School radio show and podcast airs Sunday night at 7 PM on WBAI 99.5 FM or online at www.wbai.org when Leonie Haimson, Daniel Alicea and Kaliris Salas Ramirez interview guests and discuss issues affecting public schools in NYC, the state level and nationally. You can stream or subscribe to the podcast here at Simplecast; or at iTunes, Spotify or Google.
Sign here to urge NYC to implement a real, multi-year strategy to lower class size, as the law intends, without exempting up to half or more of all students.
