Action

Parents with opportunities to develop and enhance their leadership skills in order for them to set up their children up for success in college and the work place. Click HERE to learn about out Parent Engagement Programs.

Stand for Children members, staff and volunteers will embark on a voter registration, engagement and mobilization campaign in targeted school districts. This campaign will consist of two phases, the “I Stand for Children” Campaign and the “Changing the Odds” Voter Mobilization Campaign. To sign up to volunteer for our Civic Engagement efforts please Click HERE.

Stand for Children currently has three primary advocacy areas:

• Educator Effectiveness
• Unification & Consolidation
• Quality Charter Schools

In addition to these core areas, Stand is also interested in addressing the following issues: persistently low achieving schools, early learning, funding public education, school innovation, and governance.  We will also support and elect education champions across the state.

Educator Effectiveness

There should be an effective teacher in front of our children, and every school should be led by effective leader.  The research is clear: effective educators and leaders are the most important factors that will impact a student within the school’s control.  For teachers, administrators, parents, students, and the community to have the information they need to ensure the best outcomes for students, we believe that student academic progress data should be included in teacher and principal evaluations.  This data must be linked to quality support, professional development, include multiple measures, and allow for measurement of growth between data points.  We also believe that these comprehensive evaluations should be used for employment and compensation decisions.

Unification and Consolidation

With the modernization of public education, reforms may be more effectively implemented and streamlined in efficient, well-designed, comprehensive school systems.  Stand for Children views the discussion of unification and consolidation as an opportunity to create better school systems to accelerate learning for all. Stand would like clear and viable paths to unified school systems, K-12, for the community to access if they so desire, and there should be concerted efforts to help under-resourced districts achieve better fiscal efficiencies.  Unified school districts can help create a clear goal of high school graduation, and unified systems may provide for appropriate alignment and clear accountability as a student progresses.  Finally, similarly designed education systems across the state will allow for comparison and analysis of what works and what doesn’t. 

Quality Charter Schools

All children deserve the opportunity to attend a high quality public school of their parents’ choosing.  As the charter movement has expanded inArizona over the past 15 years, they are now an established part of the education landscape, accounting for nearly 25% of all Arizona public schools and serving more than 10% of Arizona’s youth. Stand for Children encouraged the Arizona State Board for Charters to submit to an independent audit through NACSA to evaluate authorizing strength sand opportunities.  Stand is supporting the Arizona State Board for Charters as they implement key recommendations from the evaluation, and Stand will work to ensure that all charter schools in Arizona are held to a uniform standard of performance across the state.