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Volunteer for union phone banks, labor walks

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AFT members - active and retired - are encouraged to volunteer after school and on weekends during the fall election cycle for union phone banks, labor walks and literature distributions. Click here to sign up to volunteer or keep reading to find out how you can get involved...

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Atlanta Teachers Honored for Heroic Effort During Storm

For Immediate Release:
Jan. 31, 2014

Contact:
Verdaillia Turner
(404) 315-0222

Atlanta Teachers Honored for Heroic Effort During Storm

Scores Stayed Overnight in Schools to Ensure Their Students’ Safety

ATLANTA--Whether they are digging into their own pockets to buy school supplies or making sure their students have enough to eat, teachers in Atlanta and throughout Georgia go the extra mile for the children they teach.  So it wasn’t surprising that during the recent storm, scores of teachers remained in schools overnight to ensure that stranded students were safe.

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Reclaiming the Promise

Our public schools represent our nation’s commitment to helping all children dream their dreams and achieve them. A high-quality public education for all children is an economic necessity, an anchor of democracy, a moral imperative and a fundamental civil right, without which none of our other rights can be fully realized.

It’s time to reclaim the promise of public education – not as it is today or as in the past, but as we imagine it for our children – to fulfill our collective obligation to help all children succeed.

Reclaiming the promise is about fighting for neighborhood public schools that

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AFT President Weingarten on PISA 2012 International Results

WASHINGTON—Statement by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 results:
“Today’s PISA results drive home what has become abundantly clear: While the intentions may have been good, a decade of top-down, test-based schooling created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top—focused on hyper-testing students, sanctioning teachers and closing schools—has failed to improve the quality of American public education.
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Comprehensive Alternatives to Parent Trigger

The Parent Trigger legislation is resulting in a rift between parents, teachers and in some cases, the community through-out the country. Our goal is or should be to comprehensively improve schools in a collaborative and sustainable manner. If “choice” and improvement of schools are the goals, then an alternative to the Parent Trigger legislation is in order. Please find enclosed a suggested alternative model to the Parent Trigger. This model is a collaborative, comprehensive approach.

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HB 123: Parent and Teacher Empowerment Act "Parent Trigger" Proposal

Background: "Parent trigger," a concept first enacted in state legislation in California in 2010, lets the parents of students in a low-performing school collectively to petition the state or school district to allow for alternative school governance, like conversion to a charter school. Now enacted in a handful of states nationwide, parent trigger is supported by corporate backers like the Koch brothers.
 

  •  A bill, HB 123-also known as the "Parent and Teacher Empowerment Act"-has been introduced in the Georgia Legislature to allow a majority of parents (more than 50 percent) or a majority of
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AFT-Maryland LOBBY NIGHT

AFL-CIO union members will gather in Annapolis February 11th for AFT-Maryland Lobby Night.

Participants will gather at the AFT-Maryland office, 5800 Metro Drive, in Baltimore at 4:45 p.m. to board buses bound for the state capitol.

All participants will receive briefing materials that identify the bills of interest to union members and AFT-Maryland’s positions on those bills. Lobby Night participants will visit their elected representatives and inform them of the federation’s positions on legislation that affects working families in Maryland. Lists of the legislators associated with the bills of

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CBS Atlanta - Teachers Union Wants Educators To Be Better Tested Before Teaching

ATLANTA (CBS ATLANTA) -

One of the nation's largest teachers unions wants to take the profession up a notch.

The American Federation of Teachers wants educators to take a tough written exam before they step into the classroom at schools across the country.

"We want to see our profession respected and if that's what it takes to earn the respect to attract highly qualified applicants then by all means that's what we need to do," said Ron Fowler of the Georgia Federation of Teachers (GFT).

The whole idea is to raise the bar to ensure kids get the best education possible.

Teachers in Georgia do test

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Georgia Leads the Country in Growth on National Tests

Press Release

Georgia Leads the Country in Growth on National Tests
 
MEDIA CONTACT: Matt Cardoza, GaDOE Communications Office, (404) 651-7358, mcardoza@gadoe.org
Dorie Turner Nolt, GaDOE Communications Office, (404) 656-5594, dnolt@gadoe.org  
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Nov. 1, 2012 -- Georgia leads the country when looking at year-to-year growth on the most recent national tests. One-year growth on the SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement (AP), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Math, Reading and Science shows Georgia is the only state in the country to make
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Charter Schools Underperform in Georgia, US, despite Potential Brain Drain

With additional reporting by Matthew Charles Cardinale.

Article from Atlanta Progressive News, click here to go to website.

(APN) ATLANTA -- Georgia voters are currently being faced with a referendum on a possible constitutional amendment which claims as its goal to provide “for improving student achievement” by allowing a state-run commission to by-pass local school board decisions and State Board of Education decisions to approve charter schools that are not approved by either of these boards.

However, Atlanta Progressive News has learned that neither state

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