History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Bruno Manno’s “straw mom” argument
- 11-16-2011
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By Keith Catone with contributor John Rogers/Annenberg Institute
In “Not Your Mother’s PTA” (Education Next, Winter 2012), Bruno Manno contrasts a ‘fifties-ish caricature of parental engagement, the PTA, with what he imagines to be a more robust and transformational collection of parents who really do have power to create almost instant school improvement. Doing so, Manno ignores longstanding examples of authentic parent and community organizing that have been building grassroots power to fight for equity and improvement in public schools across the nation. Instead, Manno praises recent “Astroturf” creations designed to feed current top-down policy trends promoting the rapid expansion of charter schools, weakening of teachers unions, and increased reliance on test-based measures of student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Here’s what Manno has missed. (more...)
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