Leaders for quality public education from cradle to career
Over the next several months, the LEV blog will be adding new bloggers from around the state to write on local and statewide education issues. If you are interested in blogging on education reform once a month, please contact info@educationvoters.org. I have been involved in education advocacy at the local, state and national level for [...]
Newsweek: …teacher layoffs are coming—perhaps more than 100,000 nationwide. In most states, union contracts or state law requires they be done by seniority, so the newest teachers are pink-slipped, no matter how good they are. “ ‘Last in, first out’ virtually guarantees that all our great, young teachers will be out of a job, and [...]
It’s official! Initiative 1098 will be on the November ballot thanks to 384,382 Washington voters who signed the initiative petitions. Bill Gates Sr. sent out a message thanking all of the volunteers for their hard work. Here’s an excerpt: Thank you for everything you have done. I have had the pleasure to meet many of [...]
The buzz is building about the number of education reform documentaries that are currently under development this year. While An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman is garnering a good chunk of the attention (go see the trailer and read our previous blog post), there are other films worth watching for when they [...]
Huffington Post: Picture this: while photographs of scenes from the past would look quite old-fashioned, photographs of classrooms from the past and from today look unmistakably the same–desks all in rows, facing the teacher, or what Constance Yowell of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation calls “the sage on stage.” The educational system [...]
I met Terry when I was volunteering at a Seattle alternative school for runaways. An African-American male with learning and behavioral challenges, Terry had a passion to learn, but the system had bounced him around and finally out. He was a street kid without a high school diploma. At the school, we tried to give [...]
Day 2 of the State Board of Education meeting continues the debate on high school graduation requirements. The Board now has three options before it, all modifications of the Quality Core presented yesterday. The sticking issues today were: Should there be a default Core pathway? Should 2-credits of world language be part of the default Core [...]
We’re pleased to make Paramount Duty available for viewing online. The film, directed by Peter J. Vogt and produced by LEV co-founder and president Nick Hanauer, is an honest and compelling look at how the lack of support from our state impacts the lives and futures of our kids. Click below to watch the movie [...]
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For the third summer in a row, LEV is excited to host a Rainier Scholar. Each year, the Rainier Scholars program invites 60 fifth-grade students of color in the Seattle Public School District to embark on an 11-year journey to prepare them for success in school, college and life. This year, we’re hosting Laura Del [...]
We’ve had an interesting series of conversations on the heels of a few blogs that had some questioning whether LEV is “progressive.” While I hate to get all “Webster’s” on people, defining these terms can be instructive. Answers.com defines progressive as: Promoting or favoring progress toward better conditions or new policies, ideas, or methods: a [...]
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