Citizens for Public Schools

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education plans to help corporations profit from schoolchildren’s most sensitive and confidential information. Massachusetts is one of seven states committed to participate in the development and pilot testing of inBloom, a Gates Foundation initiative. Student information—including your child’s name, home address, email address, test scores, racial identity, economic and special education status, and possibly even detailed disciplinary and health records—will be stored on a data “cloud” and shared with for-profit corporations, without any guarantee that the information will be safeguarded.

For more on this and what you can do to protect sensitive student data from being shared with corporations, click here to visit the action page at the web site of our partner the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.   → Read More

The Joint Education Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature will have a public hearing on Tuesday, May 7 at 10 a.m. in room A-1 at the State House (Just inside the entrance through the garden on Bowdoin Street).

Four bills that make important, positive changes regarding charter schools will be heard.  You can come and testify or submit written testimony in support to the Education Committee: The State House, Room 473G, Boston, MA 02133…

These are the four priority bills.

HB 491, SB 258 – An Act relative to charter schools, filed by Rep. Frank Smizik, Senator Marc Pacheco. Requires local approval of any new Commonwealth charter school applications in order for funding to come from the local school district. Commonwealth charter school applications approved by the board of elementary and secondary education that do not receive local approval shall be funded by the board, but not from chapter 70 or other funds designated for local school districts.   → Read More

CPS Supports Seattle’s Garfield High Teachers: “Test Boycott is Courageous Stand for Students, Against Test Abuse”

We, the members of Citizens for Public Schools, stand with the teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle for their courageous move to boycott district-mandated Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests. We respect the Garfield teachers for saying no to the escalating use and abuse of damaging high-stakes standardized testing. For those new teachers who are barley starting next year, it would be a great idea for them to watch this video enhanced professional development program.

We believe it took great courage for them to stand up for the best interests of their students, risking their livelihoods, in the face of tremendous pressure to comply with ever greater and more onerous testing mandates. The teachers are correct to stand firm against testing policies that waste valuable time, money and energy on these flawed measures of student learning.   → Read More