Leonie Haimson is a parent advocate and Executive Director of Class Size Matters, as well as the founder of the NYC Public School Parent blog. Class Size Matters is part of a coalition called New York State Allies for Public Education, which has led the “opt-out” movement; founding member of Parents across America, a […]
October 6, 2015 Dear Friend, 1. Save the date! On Saturday, November 7th, we are co-sponsoring a Parent Action Conference at PS 133 in Brooklyn, (near the Barclay Center and many subway stops). We will have workshops on developing action plans to address school overcrowding, rising class sizes, mayoral control, empowering parents and school leadership teams, opting out […]
September 17, 2015 Dear Friend, Yesterday, the Mayor gave a well-publicized speech about his plans to move our schools forward. With great fanfare, he announced he would improve our schools by adding 2nd grade reading specialists, more Algebra, computer coding and AP classes, as well as “single shepherds” for middle and high school students in two districts (D7 […]
September 15, 2015 Dear Friends, 1. Welcome to another school year. I hope you and your family had a good summer! Please take a moment to fill out this quick survey of your child’s class size this year; if you’re a teacher, please let us know your class sizes as well. It will help us immensely […]
August 28, 2015 Dear Friends, A few quick links I wanted to share with you. Last week, I wrote an op-ed with Jeanette Deutermann of Long Island Opt for City and State about why an estimated 225,000 NY parents chose to have their children refuse the state exams last year. Despite the rash of editorials excoriating parents for […]
August 17, 2015 Dear Friends, I wanted to bring to your attention to a piece I wrote in today’s Gotham Gazette, that puts the recent credit recovery scandals in context and proposes an alternative vision for NYC struggling schools. Please take a look and let me know what you think! Saturday was the deadline for comments […]
August 13, 2015 Dear Friends, The state test scores were released yesterday and they were nothing to brag about. As before, the vast majority of studentsscored Level 1 or 2, and there was only a very small uptick in those scoring Level 3 or 4 (supposedly proficient.) The big story was the number of opt outs, […]
July 31, 2015 Yesterday, in the middle of summer, the DOE finally released the recommendations of its own Blue Book working group, recommendations which had been finalized last December, according to several reliable sources. (Chalkbeat wrongly reports the date as March.) See also Schoolbook, WNYC radio and DNAinfo, for more information on the recommendations — […]
July 30, 2015 Dear Friends, On Tuesday, the city announced it would reject the recommendations of the Blue Book Working Group, appointed by the Chancellor and co-chaired by the head of the School Construction Authority, to incorporate smaller classes into the school utilization formula. The city suppressed these recommendations for more than six months, and […]
July 10, 2015 Dear Friends, 1. Though school may be out, there’s a lot happening in the education world. Right now the Senate is debating a bi- partisan bill to revamp No Child Left Behind, called the Every Child Achieves Act (ECAA). For the first time in 13 years, there is a real chance to […]
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.
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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.
