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The PARENT Act
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National PTA called for bipartisan support of the Parental Accountability, Recruitment, and Education National Training Act (PARENT Act), which was introduced in Congress in August 1999. The act, initiated by National PTA, is designed to strengthen parent involvement provisions within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
The United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions invited National PTA President Ginny Markell to testify on current conditions in public schools and the challenges facing school systems in the 21st century. She spoke in part about the need to restore or replace outdated and occasionally dangerous infrastructure that may interfere with a child's ability to learn.
National PTA vigorously supported proposed legislation aimed at protecting student privacy in the classroom. Existing school privacy laws can keep only official records and research by federal agencies private. The escalating trend of commercial research and activities in the classroom has alarmed many parents, and this legislation would curb that trend. National PTA has had a position statement since 1990 that opposes any provision of instructional programming that requires students to watch commercials or read advertising as a condition of corporate donations to schools.
Markell was asked to testify before the U.S. House Budget Committee on the real ramifications school voucher programs could have by funneling public funds away from public schools. She made these specific points:
- Vouchers do not
offer families a real "choice." The only choice belongs to private and
religious schools that are able to hand-pick the students they enroll.
These schools are not required to admit every child with a voucher.
Children with disabilities and other special needs may be left behind in
the most troubled public schools.
- Voucher proponents
have not offered strong evidence that vouchers improve academic
achievement. After more than nine years of voucher experiments, a clear
and statistically valid success story has yet to emerge.
- Private schools
have limited public accountability.
- Vouchers do not
equalize educational opportunity. Vouchers will be least helpful to
disadvantaged families with limited resources because it will be most
difficult for them to make up the difference between the cost of a
private education and what a voucher will cover.
- Vouchers divert scarce resources from the public schools that educate 90 percent of America's children.
The 1999 Legislative
Conference, held in Washington, DC, featured discussion about the
re-authorization of ESEA, the Clinton administration's commitment to
strengthening education policy, a press conference on Capitol Hill to
release the results of a survey on parents' views about public education,
and the presentation of an Award of Special Appreciation to United States
Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Survey results are available online
at www.pta.org/programs/parentsur/index.htm.
Those who could not attend the conference in person were able to visit it
via the Internet at a specially designed "virtual" conference on National
PTA's website.
Speakers included Jack Jennings, director of the Center for
Education Policy; Crystal Kuykendall, president of Kreative and Innovative
Resources for Kids; Judith Johnson and Scott Fleming from the U.S.
Department of Education; and Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN). Congresswoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Congressman George Miller (D-CA) were
presented with the President's Recognition for Outstanding Advocacy
Award.
