Change the Stakes, My Favorite Meeting

On a late Friday afternoon once a month, 15-20 parents, principals, teachers --- public and college level, gather to plan strategies and tactics in the war against high stakes testing. With the testing season about to begin and more and more parents talking about opting out, today's  meeting was the kickoff of what should prove to be an active period right through June.

The idea of shlepping to the city on a day I took hot yoga in the morning and a long afternoon nap was not appetizing but if there is one meeting I try not to miss it is this one. Why? Because I don't know of many, or any, true parent teacher partnership groups and having regular contact with parents in a setting like this is important. We had 4 new people show up today, one a PTA president in Harlem who immediately felt comfortable enough to take an active role.

Brian Jones, Pedro Noguera, Shael Polokow-Suransky at CTS sponsored event

Under tonight's leadership of Diana Zavala, a parent and former NYC teacher (and MORE member), we tried something different by breaking into groups based on topics. I decided to work with the common core group given that MORE needs to address this issue and hasn't gotten to it so far. One of the benefits of this cross fertilizing of smallish orgs (there were at least 4 MORE members there, including two elementary school exectutive board candidates) is that each group can carve up the work. MORE can support and adopt some of the positions coming out of CTS.

Check out the change the stakes website run by Diana.

The next meeting is Friday, Feb. 1 at CUNY, 34th St and 5th Ave, rm 5414 or 5409.