The challenges that families in any one public school district in Illinois face are often a microcosm of those facing all districts, and the solutions to the biggest problems can’t be solved by an individual parent or even a group of dedicated parents in a single school or district.
The policy, legislation and campaigns we work on fall under six main issue areas:
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Equitable and adequate funding: Our state has the primary responsibility to fund our public schools. Funding should not be dependent on a community’s property values. Funding must be adequate to need.
- Privatization: Public dollars are for public schools. Charter schools, voucher programs and other privatization schemes, like the tax credit scholarship program, fundamentally damage the fabric of our public school system.
- Student data protection: Childhood is a time of growth, experimentation and development. The mistakes and challenges of childhood should not be part of a digital dossier that follows you into adulthood and hampers your chance of future success. The price of a public education can’t be a child’s personal data.
- Special education: A free, appropriate public education must be provided to every student with a disability. Nothing less than that is legal; nothing less than that is acceptable.
- Standardized testing: The overuse and misuse of standardized testing harms children and schools, distorting teaching and learning in the classroom. High-stakes testing should be replaced with authentic assessment. State accountability policy should be minimally intrusive on local education practice.
- Democratic governance: Local school boards must be held accountable through free, fair, democratic elections. Families are best served by school systems run with transparent, ethical governance that they can actively participate in.