The following is an open letter from numerous community groups across Massachusetts to Stand for Children, a formerly-grassroots group that has forsaken its community roots and begun trumpeting the pro-corporate education agenda of new big-money donors. Each of the groups signing on to this letter knows that the education reform debate must include the voices of those closest to the issues at hand: students, parents and teachers.

Education historian Diane Ravitch speaks about teacher accountability on PBS's American Graduate, a project addressing the country's high school dropout crisis. 

For NYC parent organizer Zakiyah Ansari, the legacy of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration is "one of a lack of resources and persistent inequalities that deny our children a substantive and fair opportunity to learn." In a fantastic OP-Ed published in Black Star News, Ansari, Advocacy Director for Alliance for Quality Education, takes the Bloomberg administration to task for wasting money on risky, unproven school "turnaround" policies when the city's tax dollars could be better spent

It's not fair to hold students, teachers and administrators accountable for education outcomes when they lack the resources they need to succeed in the first place. But corporate-style education policies and an overemphasis on testing have resulted in an education "reform" movement that is focused exclusively on outputs rather than inputs.

Wisconsin's Education Dilemma

Finding and keeping good teachers is vital to all schools. In Milwaukee, where the racial achievement gap is so wide, it is especially critical as well as in rural areas where lower income students have few environmental resources outside of schools to bolster learning.  This report investigates the factors involved in retaining urban and rural teachers as well as maximizing their effectiveness in the classroom.

Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, an OTL partner, has released "An Arkansas Student Bill of Rights," which details what students and parents should expect from their school districts and the resources and opportunities to which they are entitled in order to receive a quality education and reach their full potential. Watch the video, then download the report here!

Have you ever heard about something so absurd that you can’t quite believe that it even happened? Bernie Madoff comes to mind for me—I still can’t quite figure out how he pulled off such a scam.

I get the same feeling when I think about what has been happening in Wisconsin's education debate. Only this time, it’s our children who are being swindled.

At the National OTL Summit in December, youth representatives from Boston and Chicago connected and discovered that they were working on similar campaigns to make student input a part of teacher evaluations. The Boston Student Advisory Council, working with groups like Youth on Board and Boston Youth Organizing Project, won their battle last summer and we featured their success on our blog.