This week, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project hosted a webinar on the power of parents to access educational options for their children, the impact the federal government has on those options, and the harmful proposed policies that could hurt American students. The webinar was titled “Tell Them We Are Rising: Parent Choice in America.”
The webinar’s panelists included Atasha James of Legends Public Charter School, Ebony Lee of Charter School Growth Fund, Dr. Howard Fuller of Marquette University, and Earl Martin Phalen of Phalen Leadership Academies. The panel was moderated by Curtis Valentine, Co-Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project.
Watch the event livestream here:
The panel discussed how Congress and the Biden Administration can ensure neither race nor socio-economic conditions are a barrier to educational options for America’s children. Recently, the Department of Education proposed a new rule on charter schools, which if adopted as drafted, would make it difficult — if not impossible — for charter schools to qualify for federal start-up grants under the Department’s Charter School Program (“CSP”). As a result, thousands of children and families could be denied high-quality, innovative education options. Read more about the damaging rule in RAS’s recent report, “A Bureaucratic Plan to Disempower Parents,” authored by Will Marshall, President of PPI, and Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project.
This webinar is part of a series co-sponsored by Reinventing America’s Schools (RAS) Project and The 74.
The Reinventing America’s Schools Project inspires a 21st century model of public education geared to the knowledge economy. Two models, public charter schools and public innovation schools, are showing the way by providing autonomy for schools, accountability for results, and parental choice among schools tailored to the diverse learning styles of children. The project is co-led by Curtis Valentine and Tressa Pankovits.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
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Media Contact: Aaron White; awhite@ppionline.org
