A Revolution in Public Education: Taking Back the Schools
Monday, March 21 - 7 p.m.
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90049
To keep our republic functioning and free, all of its citizens must at the very least be literate, and have a civic conscience and an understanding of our system of government. If you can barely read, if you don’t know how the government works or the limits of its powers, how can you grasp the complexities of the issues? How can you make an informed choice of candidates?
Education is the cornerstone of a free society
Today, that cornerstone is crumbling. Anyone brave enough to look at the data regarding the performance of our public schools must admit that the system is in desperate need of reform. Barely half of the students who took the 2010 ACT test, for example, could read at college-ready levels.
A society does not simply absorb a generation or two of uneducated children without impact. Those unenlightened youth become unenlightened adults who corrupt the future for us all. Can our system of self-government long stand if our failing public school system is producing only illiteracy and ignorance?
To quote Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free…
it expects what never was and never will be.”
We will all suffer the consequences of the declining quality of education.
Every one of us has a stake in restoring that crumbling cornerstone.
The "Parent Trigger Law" could trigger education reform around the nation.
The Parent Trigger is a historic new law that gives parents in California the right to force a transformation of their child’s current or future failing school. All parents need to do is organize – if 51% of them get together and sign an official Parent Trigger petition, they have the power to force their school district to transform the school.
If it can happen in California, it can happen anywhere!
Who is behind it?
How does it affect the average citizen?
How will it change our public schools?
Why are Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives supporting it?
Why do the teachers unions, school administrators and other special interest groups hate it?
Why is Sacramento trying to kill it?
What has been the effect of supportive editorials in newspapers?
Four experts answer these questions and explain why every citizen must support this law.
