Speaking out

The House Education Committee held more hearings today on the remainder of the bills in the so-called “parent empowerment” package. We offered testimony opposing one bill in particular: Senate Bill 619, which would remove any limits on the number or enrollment of entirely online charter schools, called “cyber schools” in the bill. While the use of online learning has been growing, the focus of this bill is on K-12 schools which have no physical location and serve students entirely over the internet.

We delivered testimony on 20 September to the Senate Education Committee, asking its members not to move forward with charter expansion, new kinds of charters, or teacher privatization.

The bills before the committee would remove the numerical and geographic limits on charter schools, introduce a new kind of charter, the “conversion school,” expand “cyber schools,” and allow schools to privatize their teachers.

• mandate teacher evaluation systems that relied heavily on standardized tests;
• increase the administrative burden on districts while providing no additional resources;
• encourage strapped districts to do teacher evaluation “on the cheap”;
• provide incentives for administrators to hold down the ratings of more senior teachers so that it would be easier to remove them rather than cheaper, less experienced teachers during a reduction in force.
  

Remarks prepared for delivery at Ann Arbor rally on Michigan budget issues, Forsythe Middle School, 15 March 2011

Steven J. Norton, AAPS parent and Executive Director, Michigan Parents for Schools

The weather outside reminds me that our schools are surely our best shelter from the storm we face. A place of safety. A lifeboat, if you will. But for how much longer?

My name is Steve Norton, and I am a parent of two wonderful young kids in the Ann Arbor Public Schools. I’m also an advocate for public education in Michigan, and I was asked to provide the parent perspective today.

But the kind of education I’d like to speak about goes beyond multiplying fractions or constructing an organized paragraph. It has to do with teaching my children about the importance of living as part of a community, of treating every person with respect, and of working with your neighbors to make the community work for everyone. I fear that many of our leaders today in Lansing are offering a very different lesson, and that’s why I’m speaking out here today.