A local public elementary school I have been volunteering at made the decision to implement school uniforms starting in the upcoming 2013-2014 school year. This is a school with 81% of the students receiving free or reduced-price meals and a diverse student population, including 23% Asian/Pacific Islander, 18% African American, 35% Hispanic, and 16% Caucasian, among other ethnicities.* Making school uniforms mandatory not only takes away students’ independence through restricting free speech, which is a right given to them in the First Amendment, but it increases costs to families who cannot afford to have more expenses. Those who support school uniforms say there are many benefits in doing so, including improved behavior and academic success. However, a study done by David L. Brunsma and Kerry A. Rockquemore shows “student uniforms have no direct effect on substance use, behavioral problems, or attendance” and “the authors found a negative effect of uniforms on student academic achievement.”** With the lack of evidence regarding advantages to having school uniforms and the seemingly obvious disadvantages, I propose we protect the rights of our students and remove the ability of our public schools to require uniforms. *2011-12 School Performance Report, Highline School District. **Brunsma, D. L., & Rockquemore, K. A. (1998). Effects of student uniforms on attendance, behavior problems, substance use, and academic achievement. Journal Of Educational Research, 92(1), 53.

90% of a child's brain development occurs in the first 5 years of life. California has the opportunity to allow early educators to organize a give them a stronger voice to advocate for policy changes that will improve the quality of state supported early education and child care programs.

On July 24th, the Democratic-led Senate voted for a bad deal that would send student loan interest rates into the stratosphere. Under this deal, student loan interest rates would climb as high as 8.25% for undergrads, while graduate students could pay rates as high as 9.5% and parents taking out PLUS loans could pay up to 10.5%. Worse still, Democrats may cave to Republican House-passed legislation that ties loans to "market rates." With California leading the nation in tuition increases (a 300% rise in costs over the last decade), our incoming new University of California President must fight to get a better deal for California's students. Tell Napolitano to speak out for progressive student loan reform that keeps college affordable and to urge her former boss, the President, to veto any bill that doesn't meet these guidelines.

This spring Christie-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson pushed through a school budget that cut $56 million from Newark schools, slashing funding for some schools by as much as 15%. Nearly 1,000 Newark students walked out of class in protest. The Newark Board of Education gave her a vote of no confidence and the City Council unanimously called for a moratorium on any more of her ‘reforms.’ But like the CEO of a bailed out bank, Anderson is somehow still up for as much as a $50,000 bonus. Giving Anderson a massive bonus while Newark schools bleed is cronyism at its very worst, and it's an insult to New Jersey students, educators, and taxpayers.

On average, New Jersey’s 2,500 school buildings are 50 years old and are four times more densely populated than office buildings. Age, overcrowding, and deferred maintenance strain ventilation, heating, and electrical systems, which, in many cases, result in dangerous conditions that threaten the health of students and staff and impede students’ learning. Everyday, students in New Jersey are exposed to hazardous conditions like mold, lead, PCBs, and poor indoor air quality resulting from decades of delayed repairs and the failure to start and complete new school construction projects. On May 24, 2011, the New Jersey Department of Education, together with the New Jersey Schools Development Authority, requested that each SDA district (formerly known as Abbott Districts) identify and describe any potential emergent conditions that may exist in the district’s school facilities. The DOE regulations 2 define an emergent condition as “so injurious or hazardous that it causes an imminent peril to the health and safety of students and staff.” In response, school districts submitted more than 700 applications for emergent projects to be reviewed by the DOE on an “expedited basis” as required by the regulations. In the spring of 2012, a mere seventy-six of the applications were approved. Now, over a year later, the SDA has completed only a few of these projects and has not committed to complete the remaining projects by the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year. This is unacceptable. Allowing repairs to wait for over two years unnecessarily exposes students and staff to unsafe and unhealthy conditions. We request that you ensure all approved emergent projects be completed by this September -- before our children and staff return to school. Communities across the state remain in desperate need of functioning, modern, and safe school facilities. Every day our students and those entrusted to teach and care for them, enter buildings that are unhealthy and unsafe. If we expect to have thriving schools and effective learning environments, these emergent repairs must be addressed. Every child has a right to receive a quality education and the facilities in which these students receive their education should be of high quality, and sound structure.

The Texas State Board of Education (TXSBOE) has already begun working on its once-a-decade adoption of science textbooks for Texas classrooms. And for years, an anti-science faction of that board has done all it can to undermine the science of evolution and climate change by giving equal weight to nonscientific beliefs like climate change denial and the idea that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. Whether you have school-aged kids or not, this fight is too important to the future of Texas and the nation to ignore. With over 5 million students, Texas is one of the country's biggest buyers of textbooks. And that has an impact on other states, because book publishers often follow our lead so that they don't have to create different versions of the same science books.

The purpose of this petition is to stop kids from being singled out in gym class. We need to eliminate the concept of being "picked last." A team should not be determined by its weakest or strongest player, but by how well they work together. When gym teachers select at random order each time, this will allow kids to make new friends and ensure greater self development. Schools should aspire to be safe havens. They should be about bringing students together and not spreading them apart. JOIN IN! SIGN ON!

Under pressure from the White House, members of Congress are plowing forward with a student loan interest rate "solution" that is bad for students -- worse for students in the long-run than allowing the current interest rate (6.8%) to stand. With the Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013, the government stands to make $184 billion over 10 years off the backs of hard-working students, pushing them further into debt, and making it harder to pay for college.

For more than 30 years, the Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Graduate Center for Worker Education, located in downtown Manhattan, has provided an opportunity for New York City working-class professionals to earn masters’ degrees in Urban Policy & Administration with specializations in New York City Government and Health and Nutrition Sciences. Proud alumni have gone on to elected and public office in New York City and careers in law, higher education, labor unions, public health, and non-profits. In short, the GCWE has made it possible for New York City's diverse, working-class population to get the skills and credentials they need to advance in their professional careers and also advance the interests of the working-class as a whole. Despite the vitality of this program, recent events have left students, alumni, faculty, and staff in CUNY seriously concerned over the future of the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education and its degree programs. Professors have been dismissed, enrollment and classes dramatically reduced, and support services have all but stopped at the center’s Downtown Manhattan campus. Since spring 2012, Brooklyn College has withdrawn the resources that had once nurtured the Graduate Center for Worker Education, and has visibly removed necessary educational services for its hard-working students. The removal of essential staff, faculty, and resources has been followed with negligible communication by the college administration to students, faculty, staff, labor unions and the many communities that the center serves. For those students struggling to finish their degrees this situation has created an environment that is not conducive to learning. The GCWE, stripped of the people and programs that made it work so well in the past 30 years, no longer provides students with an environment that fosters the mutual respect, trust, support, and the tools needed to excel within an institution of higher learning. For the remaining students, classes are cancelled with little notice, no administrative staff is available to help, and no faculty advisors and deputies are available for essential consultation about our academic progress. Today, the halls of the GCWE campus are virtually abandoned and the program is all but defunct. Left with no other choices, GCWE students have begun applying to other CUNY campuses. Unfortunately, these other campuses are not as well-suited to working-class, trade unionists seeking a professional education to better themselves and New York City. We deserve a learning environment that promotes the educational and pedagogical goals of New York City working-class professionals. Therefore, today, we students, alumni, concerned faculty and citizens ask you to join us in demanding that Brooklyn College and CUNY honor its commitment to the working-class professionals of New York City by restoring the full-service degree programs at the Downtown Manhattan campus of the Graduate Center for Worker Education. We view the withdrawal of staff and faculty and the restriction of admission to New York City residents as a breach of CUNY’s commitment to educate students seeking to improve their lives and those of their diverse communities The dismantling of this long-standing program ranks with other attacks on working people across the country. Brooklyn College should be better. We seek the immediate restoration of the GCWE for the working people of New York City.

Girls get a dance and boys get to go to a baseball game. A girl-only group gets home-ec, while a boys-only group goes to the science museum. That could become the reality soon for students in Rhode Island. A bill that would allow schools to separate girls and boys from the extracurricular activities of their choice just passed in the Rhode Island legislature. It’s sitting on the Governor’s desk where he has just a few days to veto or it will become law, but there’s still time to stop it if we act now. S-12 would undermine the strong anti-discrimination laws that have protected Rhode Island children for decades by allowing public schools to limit extracurricular activity to students of one sex only. These discriminatory policies reinforce harmful sex stereotypes and fail to provide girls and boys with equal access to fair education, a principle protected by Title IX. Governor Chafee could put an end to this unfair law with a stroke of his pen. And he’s more likely to act if he knows we’re watching. It’s his duty as Governor to protect the right of all children—regardless of sex—to have equal opportunities in education by vetoing S-12 today.

What would you do if you found out your child’s teacher, who your school insists is “highly qualified,” was actually inexperienced and had actually didn’t have a credential? Great teachers are the backbone to any great school. A well-prepared teacher working with other professionals in a stable environment is critical to strengthening schools and improving learning. The U.S. House, as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Action (ESEA) reauthorization process, is considering a proposal that would continue to allow underprepared teachers who do not have adequate training or certification to be identified as ‘highly qualified’ under federal law. According to the Office for Civil Rights Data Collection, children of color are twice as likely to be taught by novice teachers. Students with disabilities are also taught disproportionately by inexperienced and unprepared teachers. Tell Congress to VOTE NO on H.R. 5 and to oppose any extension of the temporary provision allowing teachers in training to work in high-need schools, because it waters down the entry standards for new teachers. Federal law should protect students and set a standard for teaching quality that ensures all students are taught by teachers who are well-prepared for the job. “Highly qualified” should mean something – it should tell parents that the school district is serious about providing quality instruction!

Mitch Daniels was a high-ranking Bush administration official and Governor of Indiana - and it's just come out that while Governor he emailed his state's Commissioner for HIgher Education, Teresa Lubbers, demanding that she attempt to purge books by the massively influential historian Howard Zinn from education courses because he didn't like Zinn's political views. We need answers on how far it went. Having a Governor personally intervene to deny credit for studying an academic he or she didn't like is disturbing enough - what makes it even worse is Daniels just became President of Purdue University, one of the most important research universities in the United States.