A final post on the March . . .

Though I haven’t had any feedback on my posts about the Save Our Schools March on Washington D.C., I will share one final site to read about it at Education Week where we learn that the number of people attending is closer to 3000, not the 8000 I shared yesterday. The article also has some feedback from the Center for Education Reform, one of the groups not supportive of the coalition’s goals.


The movement has also been the subject of criticism, most notably from the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based advocacy group for charter schools and other forms of school choice. The center took issue with the SOS group’s call for additional federal money for schools but less prescriptive accountability and testing requirements.


The SOS coalition “advocates for the status quo, and reform to them is about money, control, and no high-stakes tests or accountability,” Jeanne Allen, the center’s president, said in a statement. “SOS is about deforming education, not reforming it. They put up the guise that this is for the families and students, but in truth, these groups want to restrict and remove any power parents have in their child’s education.”

I haven’t spent enough time looking closely at the details of the coalition’s goals though I do know that both of the nation’s major teacher unions have been supportive of the effort. Even with the criticism, however, I agree with the need to examine the role of high stake tests and that we need to move the debate from those “bad teachers” and how do we get rid of them to what we can do to support the cultural changes necessary to create learning environments where all students experience success over time.

You can read more on the march than you probably have time for at Larry Ferlazzo's best posts on the subject here.   Over on Alexander Russo's site is a link to an amusing video message from Jon Stewart to the marchers.

Also, as I asked yesterday, please know that I would appreciate any help on embedding a video into my posts. I have another one (like the Stewart video) that I would like to share and not just provide the link. Thanks for helping.