Educational reform desperately needs reform. Reform in education today is in the hands of Federal programs including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the Race to the Top Fund of 2009. Although states can submit “flexibility requests” to receive waivers on some aspects of the NCLB, the reforms that have been affecting American schools have based everything on testing students to “measure” their achievement in math and reading, as well as science and social studies.
States are now using student test scores to not only evaluate the students, but to determine whether teachers are good or bad, school are successful or failures, and how much funding schools will receive in the future. Don’t you think this is an awful lot of pressure on students? Students as young as 9 years old are held accountable by means of these achievement tests, and indeed many of these students might sit for three-90 minutes sessions in one content area.
Something is wrong with this picture of reform.
Education needs reform, but it needs to happen from the ground-up. In many states, grassroots organization are forming that are pushing back against the corporate type of reform that holding school hostage. Here are three grassroots organizations in Georgia that you might want to check out.
Engaged Intellectual
The
engaged intellectual is a blog by Dr. Stephanie Jones, Professor of Education at the University of Georgia. An engaged intellectual:
I believe that an engaged intellectual is someone who is intensely curious about the world around her, constantly in the act of researching people, herself, and the politics of social interactions and injustices, working as an educator either formally or informally to bring people together for reasons of solidarity, and consciously merging “intellectual” theory and everyday practice in life/pedagogy to work for social change.—Stephanie Jones
At the engaged intellectual you will find pages devoted to films, books, recent publications by Stephanie Jones, social class diversity and children’s literature, student teachers and first-year teachers for social justice.
Empowered Georgia
Empowered Georgia is a non-partisan education advocacy group. The core beliefs of Empowered Georgia focus on empowering parents and teachers. In particular the group supports teachers by building collaboration and innovation that bridges across grade levels and disciplines, using evaluation as a way to help students learn, and restore respect to the teaching profession.
Teaching Georgia Writing Collective
The Teaching Georgia Writing Collective is a group of educators, parents and concerned citizens who engage in public writing and public teaching about education in Georgia. Some goals of the collective include: 1) empowering educators to reclaim their workplace and professionalism, 2) empowering families to stand up for their children and shape the institutions their children attend each day, 3) empowering children and youth to have control over their education, and 4) enhancing the education of all Georgians.
Members of the collective
do not have to disclose their participation in any way. However, each collective member can decide when and where she or he informs others that she or he is a member. It is important that all members of the collective respect the right of others to remain anonymous in the collective writing process. You can contact the collective:
teachinggeorgia@gmail.com.
Next Steps
What are some other grassroots organization that you know about? Please share them with us.
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Educational reform desperately needs reform. Reform in education today is in the hands of Federal programs including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, and the Race to the Top Fund of 2009. Although states can submit “flexibility requests” to receive waivers on some aspects of the NCLB, the reforms that have been affecting American schools have based everything on testing students to “measure” their achievement in math and reading, as well as science and social studies.
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