PIE Network Guest

With all the growth in the advocacy sector, many are curious about the ways member groups are collaborating. It's an appropriate question: mission driven-organizations should maximize their resources.  Helping reformers borrow and build on each other's work is a core part of the PIE Network's mission. One way that plays out is when members travel to endorse each other's reform...
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Last week, the PIE Network's communicators network digested some great data on teachers' views on a variety of topics including education reform. That conversation reminded us that teachers are much more likely to welcome bold reform efforts that rethink the way educators are recruited, retained, and evaluated in order to improve student outcomes if they can trust that their school district and...
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The PIE Network requires nonpartisanship as a condition of membership, and election years remind us why.  We're not Pollyannas; we just know how politics works. Rarely can just one party pass and sustain reform.     A bill headed to Minnesota's governor's desk illustrates what can happen when partisan politics threaten reform. Many leading states have adopted laws to end...
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Colorado Succeeds President Tim Taylor says it was easier for Colorado parents to find information to compare two vacuum cleaners than to compare two schools. But that was before they created Colorado School Grades , a tool backed by a coalition of 18 leading business, parent, and civic organizations (including Colorado Stand for Children , the PIE Network's other Colorado member). ...
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What a difference an election year makes. It wasn't long ago that ConnCAN was counting the number of blanks on Connecticut's Race to the Top application, lamenting the state's lackluster commitment to reforming its schools. This week, I am headed to New Haven for Yale's annual Education Leadership Conference , where Connecticut's new Governor will be discussing how he plans to make 2012...
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We are welcoming a new Senior Director of Communications to our team.     Barbara Burt comes to the PIE Network with years of experience that could not be more suited for the PIE Network.  She’s worked in a variety of communications roles, including a congressional campaign, and has a strong sense of advocacy and supporting networks from years of work for Common Cause....
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"Seizing the Opportunity: How Education Advocacy Groups and State Policy Makers Work Together to Advance Reform” provides an inside look at the role education advocacy groups have played in 11 reform-leading states to advance education reform. This report, written by Education First for the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network, documents best practices used to advantage...
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Our network is pleased to welcome three of the country’s top education reformers to our Board of Directors . The new board members are: Denis Calabrese, president of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in Houston, known for its major contributions to K–12 education reform. He is a public policy and communications expert who has advised government and corporate leaders and served...
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By Paul Herdman - As I was flying back from Singapore last month, an uneasy feeling came over me. Are we missing the boat in the great American teacher debate? The Singapore trip was for a 39-person U.S. delegation of government, union, philanthropic, and organizational leaders in education representing a healthy mix of reformers and traditionalists alike. (We also visited Shanghai,...
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The recent Education Trust National Conference provided a great opportunity to discuss reform with educators who care as deeply about improving schools as any policy advocate, but don’t always applaud the concepts we support, like value-added or even accountability. It reminded me how much work advocates face in persuading teachers and parents that schools which fail to raise achievement...
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By Catharine Bellinger - When asked to reflect on the core values that define meaningful education reform, advocates often point to one in particular: high expectations. This value resonates with us because in great schools, high expectations are present at every level -- educators have high expectations for each other, for students, for parents, for the quality of curricula, for the rigor of...
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By Alex Johnston-- Members of PIE Network are by definition focused on pushing for policy change in state capitals across the country—and with 34 member organizations in 24 states plus D.C., we’ve got a wide range of state political climates to reckon with. As a result, both as a network and as individual members, we don’t often think about federal education policy first and...
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I've seen the assertion that "Change has no constituency" attributed to everyone from Machiavelli to George Bernard Shaw. Whoever said it, the network again proved him wrong. True, organizing any constituency for change is hard, hard work, but it's being done all across the country by the network's 34 member organizations working to change state policies to improve education. Two...
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The adoption of Common Core State Standards throughout most of the country and a Tennessee law that ties teacher tenure to student performance were recognized by PIE Network members as the leading education reform advances of the past year at the “Eddies!” Awards in Seattle on Sept. 27th. It was a great night for recognizeing people and policies that are making a difference in...
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Marches on state capitols! Recall campaigns! Calls for President Obama to fire Arne Duncan! Actors and comedians coming to the rescue of beleaguered teachers! Barrages of tweets claiming education reformers are corporate stooges who want to make billionaires even richer, one student at a time!  Politics, as the saying goes, ain't beanbag. Neither is education reform-as most of those active...
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Housewives in Germany know what PISA scores are, but Americans have largely ignored international comparisons in education, according to Stanford University researcher Erik Hanushek, one of the speakers at a recent Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance conference, “Learning from the International Experience.”  After reading countless articles about what places like...
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Today, we are excited to welcome eight new members to the PIE Network, increasing our total membership to 34 groups located in 23 states and the District of Columbia. That's home to 66% of U.S. population.   In early July, I wrote about the network's size and scope and before that, the movement's growth. These eight new members add four states plus D.C. to our member map. We said...
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All too often, the discussions on improving education seems to begin and end in Washington, D.C.  That's a shame, because here at the PIE Network, we know most of the real progress in making schools better happens at the state level. So it's heartening to be able to tell you about the great work our member group in Tennessee is doing on the critical topic of rural education. Today the State...
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  The education reform movement has made such enormous progress in the past few years that a backlash is inevitable. It’s coming this weekend in the form of Save Our Schools, a campaign endorsed by many of the education employee unions across the country.   But save from what, exactly? Public accountability? The increased attention that’s finally being paid to the...
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A few weeks ago, I used this space to talk about the tremendous growth in the education reform advocacy sector over the last five years and the impact it's had on accelerating the pace of reform. Let's add a little data to that story to clarify PIEn's role in the state-level reform movement. First, some basics: since our founding meeting in 2007, the PIE Network has doubled the number of states...
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