Welcome to Stand for Children in Massachusetts
Groundbreaking Win for Massachusetts’ ChildrenThank you for speaking up for children: Your advocacy made a difference! On January 14, 2010, the legislature delivered a strong education reform bill that reflects input from parents, educators, and community leaders. An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap will help close the achievement gap and ensure that Massachusetts remains a national leader in public education. Advocates like you sent hundreds of emails to legislators, lobbied in person, distributed letters throughout the State House and spoke at press conferences. Your energetic voice for children brought attention to critical issues over the past several weeks and strengthened the final legislation. What does the final bill do? - Strengthens our state’s application for up to $250 million in federal Race to the Top funds, resulting in additional money for districts and targeted innovations
- Helps students trapped in our state’s lowest performing schools by giving superintendents and the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education targeted intervention powers to quickly turn around failing schools
- Gives families new opportunities to send their children to public charter schools in the 10% lowest-performing districts; improves fairness and transparency in the process of granting charters; and extends the district reimbursement schedule from three years to six years, increasing total charter tuition reimbursement from 200% to 225%
- Gives educators and community members in every district the opportunity to create Innovation Schools to further best practices
- Gets all districts one step closer to adequate education funding by calling on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to study the current status of public education financing and report to the Joint Committee on Education
To learn more, read our summary and analysis or read the full text of the bill: An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap Recent press highlights:Race to the Top To learn about Massachusetts’ application for Race to the Top, read the Executive Summary from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and visit the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website for more information. To learn about the Race to the Top competition, visit http://www.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html. Closing the Achievement GapMassachusetts has some of the best schools in the country – but not for everyone. The achievement gap between low income and high income students is staggering and the social and economic consequences threaten the vibrancy of our state. Watch a video of our policy panel about the Achievement Gap. Stand for Children members have been active in calling for education reform legislation to close the achievement gap. On September 17, Stand members testified in support of the Governor’s proposed bills HB4163 and HB 4164, which laid the groundwork for An Act Relative to the Achievement Gap. See what parents, business leaders and legislators said about these bills:
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