Mississippi

According to a new report, Pre-K enrollment has doubled in the U.S. over the past ten years. But because of budget cuts, state per-child spending for Pre-K programs has decreased dramatically. 

The stakes are high in education reform, what with needing to adequately prepare our children to maintain our nation's economic vitality, international competitiveness and democratic vibrancy. But the policymakers that are pushing for more privatization in our public schools are gambling our children's education - and our nation's future - on a lousy hand of reform policies. 

How is it that education policymakers can profess to respect teachers while at the same time ignoring national teacher opinion polls and instead supporting policies like merit pay based on test scores, competitive grants, and the expansion of online learning and charter schools?

If you ever doubt the ability of community organizing to influence debates on public education reform, check out some of these recent success stories. From Pennsylvania to Florida, parent, students and educators across the country are influencing public will and making their voices heard in their local governments. 

Value-added teacher rating models fail to account for the vast number of factors that influence student test scores from one year to the next. Since they can't control for factors like class size, home and community challenges, summer learning loss (which disproportionately affects low-income students), then there is no way they can provide an accurate picture of how effective a teacher is in raising student test scores. 

The Montgomery County public school district is a model for collaboration between teacher unions and administrators, and it provides a strong argument against corporate-style reform efforts that antagonize and seek to dismantle unions.

Updated with new resources - No good news from Washington this week as the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights released unsettling new data that paints a stark picture of the opportunity gap facing students of color. From school discipline policies and teacher equity to grade retention and access to and participation in algebra classes and gifted programs, students of color are disproportionately - and negatively - affected.

With teachers and the teaching profession being attacked and denigrated by politicians across the country, we're lucky teacher job satisfaction has only dropped 15 percent on the annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher.