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Meetings and Events
Annual Meeting of Parents CARE forges agenda
for coming year
Coping with the first serious snowfall of the season, 50 hardy parents,
teachers and friends of public education participated in the Parents CARE 2004
Annual Meeting on Saturday November 13 "Enhancing and Maintaining Public
Education In Difficult Times". We received cogent briefings on the new burdens
on our public schools from the MCAS tests, No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and
limitations on needed financial investments. These provided a context for four
Working groups to identify issues needing attention in the coming year. New
efforts to monitor science education and school athletics programs were
initiated.
  
  
#1) Jean McGuire giving welcome
#2) Larry Ward MC
#3) Lisa Guisbond reporting on NCLB
#4) Nancy Walser, Cambridge School Committee
#5) Paul Toner, Pres Cambridge Teachers Association
#6) Ruth Kaplan
In giving welcome, Parents CARE chair Jean McGuire
pointed out how the MCAS tests and NCLB were being used to stigmatize subgroups
of students, especially those most in need of equitable and quality instruction.
Lisa Guisbond highlighted the many provisions of the NCLB whose actual impact
was to punish students and school systems, through the setting of artificial and
unreachable goals (See her report with Monty Neil "Failing Our children"
elsewhere on this site). Cambridge School Committee member Nancy Walser noted
the multi-faceted quality education provided to students in the Cambridge
schools, but identified the storms on the horizon from redundant charter schools
and constrained budgets. Paul Dunphy pointed out some of the effects of the
privatization of education in the state. He described how the Sabis Corporation,
holding the contract for the Springfield charter school, had arranged to keep
all unspent funds, while every other sector of the Springfield municipal
services was receiving severe cuts. Paul Toner, President of the Cambridge
Teacher’s Association, noted that despite the absolute dependence on experienced
and dedicated teachers for quality education, teachers were being demoralized by
inadequate resources, unreachable goals in the form of the NCLB, and increasing
pressures from the State Dept of Education.
In the coming weeks reports of the discussions of the working groups on NCLB
and MCAS; Boston School Issues; Science Education, and School Athletics budgets,
will be posted here. At the business meeting delegates agreed that continued
development of a statewide network of public school parents was critical in the
period to come.
The meeting closed with a presentation by Ruth Kaplan of the Brookline School
Committee. Ruth described the long series of struggles carried on over the past
four years to limit the damage being done to our students and schools by the
one-size-fits-all MCAS tests. She quoted Winston Churchill and noted the Red Sox
championship as evidence that victory was possible despite the dark clouds. As
evidence of the ongoing effort to protect our public schools Ruth reported that
the Massachusetts Association of Schools Committees had again passed a strong
resolution calling for replacement of the MCAS graduation requirement with
authentic assessment.
Program:
9:30 am: Coffee and Registration
10:00 am: Opening Panel: Public Education in the Shadow of NCLB
11:00 am: Working Groups: Impacts of NCLB and MCAS; Boston School Issues;
Science Education; Maintaining School Sports
12:15 pm: Lunch
1:00 pm: Business Meeting
1:30 pm: Action Priorities for Enhancing our Public Schools
Minutes of MassCARE Steering Committee meeting -
February 26, 2004
News from Previous Events
Photos from April 12, 2003 MassCARE
Annual Convention
Report from the
Boston hearing on MCAS held
on March 18, 2003
If you would like to announce an anti-MCAS or public
school advocacy meeting or event in your area
please click here
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