On Saturday, Derrick Jackson wrote:
At best, parents are lumped together among the many “stakeholders" who provide “letters of support" in the Race to the Top applications. Here at home, the 180-page Massachusetts application rarely mentions parents, even as it concedes that “strong parent and community engagement is a critical lever of school turnaround."
The near-omission is shortsighted, especially because you know who will get the blame — from teachers, principals, and politicians — if the achievement gap fails to narrow. Those ignorant, uninvolved parents! Underscoring this mindset is President Obama himself, who in February boasted that he had not missed a parent-teacher conference and says, “I don’t care how poor you are, you can turn off the television set during the week."Read the full article here
On Sunday, Andy Smarick wrote:
So how did the state still manage to place a discouraging 13th overall out of 16 finalists?
By coming in very last place in the application’s most important section: improving the teaching profession.
Read the full article here
These two groups of folks need to be active in the educational discussion.
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