Who are those guys?*

Yesterday at stART on the Street, a parent came over, sat down next to me, and said, "What do I need to know about Stand for Children?" This one's for you.
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The fall issue of Rethinking Schools has an article on Stand for Children for which I was interviewed. While the specifics of the Massachusetts implosion of Stand for Children in the sidebar are crucial reading, particularly now, as Stand pursues signatures for a ballot measure to require 50% of teachers' evaluations to be student test scores, the full article bears reading, as it demonstrates the nationwide flip that has taken place in Stand. On message board, blogs, Facebook, parents from across the country who had been members of Stand are finding one another and processing what the heck happened to an organization that went from empowering parents to speak out to overruling them and browbeating them into silence or acquiescence.
It happened nationwide. And it happened, as Libby and Sanchez point out, right about the time the money changed (as I've posted previously). You might look again at the memo that came out last spring from national headquarters, which laid down the new premise that all decisions regarding state and national positions would not be made by members; members were relegated to local-only issues. And what, nowadays, are local-only issues? Most issues are linked, in some way, to national or state policy. With no power to influence that, how does a member have any voice?
They don't.


*Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid