Jeff sits down with the founders of Parents Across America and Save our Schools New Jersey.

Topics Covered:

• Public Schools vs Charter Schools
• Using Test Scores for the right reasons
• The Fight against privatizing education
• The Disinvestment of Education
• How parents can get involved in their children’s education

Websites and Apps Discussed:

About our Guests:

Julia Sass Rubin is one of the founding members of Save Our Schools NJ, a nonpartisan, grassroots, all volunteer organization of parents and other concerned residents who believe that all New Jersey children should have access to a high quality public education.

She also is an Associate Professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where she teaches and conducts research on community economic development and community development finance.

Dr. Rubin earned her PhD and MA from Harvard University, an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, and an AB with honors from Harvard-Radcliffe College.  She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Alfred A. Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University and spent a year as a Henry Luce Scholar in Bangkok, Thailand.

www.SaveOurSchoolsNJ.org

http://www.facebook.com/SaveOurSchoolsNJ

Karran Harper Royal works as an Education Advocate in New Orleans. She is the Assistant Director of  Pyramid Community Parent Resource Center and the former Training Coordinator for the New Orleans Parent Organizing Network.  Her work at Pyramid involves providing one to one support to parents of children with disabilities and conducting workshops to help parents understand their rights under federal special education law.   In addition to working with Pyramid, Mrs. Harper Royal is a contributor to Research on Reforms and is a consultant to the  Southern Poverty Law Center. Mrs. Harper Royal is a tireless advocate for students with disabilities and has appeared in a number of broadcasts and publications related to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and public education reform in New Orleans.  In her work related to ADHD, she has served  on the national board of directors for Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (CHADD) where she worked on the public policy committee.   She is also  a founding member of Parents Across America. Mrs. Harper Royal has been featured on CNN’s Perry’s Principals and continues to work in New Orleans organizing parents and community members to support quality schools for all children.  She’s often asked  to speak to university classes, at conferences and provide comments to local and national media around issues related to public education and students with disabilities.  She is married with two sons, one a graduate of public schools and the other currently attends public school  in New Orleans.  She blogs at Education Talk New Orleans.

Sue Peters is a founding member of Parents Across America (PAA), a national grassroots public education advocacy organization. She also co-founded Seattle Education 2010, a blog of education news and commentary, with fellow public schools parent Dora Taylor.  As a journalist, her writings about the arts, politics and education have been published in various local and national print and online publications, including the Huffington Post. She has an M.A. in journalism from Stanford University and children in Seattle’s public schools.

Julie Woestehoff has been with the Chicago non-profit organization
Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) for 20 years, and has
been its executive director since 1995. She is the parent of two Chicago
Public School graduates, a veteran elected local school council member,
and writer of the blog, PURE Thoughts, which covers key education
issues. Julie is a frequent speaker on topics of parent involvement,
site-based management, and student testing, is regularly interviewed on
national and local news, and was named one of the 100 Most Powerful
Women in Chicago by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004.  In 2003 along with
the rest of the PURE staff, she won the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for
a Changing World Award, recognizing powerful grass-roots leadership. In
2010, Julie co-founded the new national group. Parents Across America.