Congratulations to our honorees! Champions for Education Justice: Rev. Willie Bodrick II, Catari Giglio, Barbara Madeloni. And thanks to all the CPS members and friends who joined us last night at the 2019 CPS Annual Meeting to help us honor them. It was truly an inspiring and energizing night to fuel our spirits for the Fund Our Future fight ahead! → Read More
Legislative Breakfast – Thank you!
March 6, 2019 by
Thank you to all who attended our Legislative Breakfast at the State House on March 6th in support of equitable access to quality public education and to learn about CPS’s legislative agenda.
Special thanks to Rep. Tommy Vitolo for sponsoring the event complete with delicious bagels from Kupel’s. We’d like to give special thanks to all who spoke (and thanks to everyone who came):
- Senator Jason Lewis
- Representative Vitolo
- Representative Keefe
- Representative Vega
- Representative Decker
- MTA Merrie Najimy
- AFT Beth Kontos
- Jack Schneider
We look forward to working with all of you as we advance opportunities for Massachusetts children and stand up for public education!
Stay tuned for our next State House Action — the PROMISE Act Hearing on March 22 at 10am. Plan to come and bring your stories of why funding our future is important to you!
It’s Time to Fund Our Future!
December 20, 2018 by
I was thrilled to join students, parents, educators and civil rights leaders to officially launch the campaign to #FundOurFuture on Tuesday, Dec. 18 at the Massachusetts State House.
CPS is part of a new and growing coalition with a simple, clear message: It’s time for Governor Baker and the legislature to make it their top priority to reinvest $1.5 billion a year in public education, from pre-K through higher education. We expect this coalition to expand; founding members include American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, Boston Teachers Union, Citizens for Public Schools, FairTest, Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, Massachusetts Jobs With Justice, Massachusetts Teachers Association, NAACP New England Area Conference, and PHENOM (Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts).
As I told Masslive, “We’re basically just calling on legislators to keep their promise to cherish our public schools and fund them adequately.”
Click here to read summaries of the two Fund Our Future-backed bills, one for K-12 and the other for higher education. → Read More
Do you know where the two candidates for governor stand on education?
November 2, 2018 by
The next governor of Massachusetts will have great influence on the health and well being of our public schools through choices on funding, privatization, assessment and accountability. He will also influence K-12 policy through appointments to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
He will also make appointments to the Supreme Judicial Court. The court’s ruling that the state’s system of funding schools was unconstitutional forced a major increase in state aid for low-income communities in 1993. A very different court this year kept the “millionaire’s tax” off the ballot.
Do you know where the two candidates stand on education? CPS considers it an important part of our mission to educate the public about public education, so we devote this edition of “News You Can Use About Our Schools” to summarizing the two candidates’ positions on three aspects of public education. (Note: CPS does not endorse candidates for public office.) → Read More
CPS Statement on Results of New MCAS-Based Accountability System
September 27, 2018 by
“It may seem reassuring that Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeff Riley says that ‘the idea behind identifying schools for targeted assistance was not intended to be punitive, but rather was an attempt to provide the support they need so students can thrive.’ Yet we know that there are not adequate resources for the state and certainly not for the districts serving our most needy students.
So we have a new, more “challenging” and “rigorous” test-based accountability system that has identified hundreds of schools as needing targeted assistance, but not the assistance or resources they need. Whether or not this is a good way of identifying which schools do or do not need assistance is another question.
It’s past time to fund our schools and fundamentally rethink our accountability system. This “new and improved” system remains too focused on standardized test results, which are largely driven by a school’s socioeconomics.
No doubt Commissioner Riley knows that Lawrence Public Schools have some of the brightest, most motivated and hard-working students in the Commonwealth. → Read More
