In this critical time, let's listen to powerful pro-public education voices like Peter Greene. But let's also be hyperaware of the well-funded forces trying to dismantle public education. 

Read "Peter Greene: I Believe in Public Education" published in 2021 followed by an excerpt from the harsh reality in The Disinformation Playbook Targeting Our Public Schools and Elections/ published this past month.

"I believe in public education. [En español]

I believe in the promise that every child should have a free quality education. And not by going out to shop for it, to hunt it down like looking for deals on a toaster or a used car, nor to travel far from home to find it, nor to have to beg and apply and hope that the school will accept them, but to have it delivered to them in their own community without exception.

Not that we’ve always hit the bullseye in this country. Our system of tying school financing to housing leaves much to be desired. The same forces of racism and economic inequity that twist and turn our society as a whole also leave their mark on our education system...

We’re living through a time of an unprecedented assault on public education. Members of the data cult, free market advocates, social engineers, profiteers and privatizers (some sincere in their concern, and some motivated by base opportunism) are looking for ways to dismantle the system, disenfranchise parents and taxpayers, and to “liberate” billions and billions of taxpayer dollars. Their ranks are filled with education amateurs who don’t really know what the heck they’re talking about.

What none of these disruptors promise is an education system that delivers a quality education to every single child in the country. Nor do they promise accountability to the taxpayers who fund the system, nor a system that is owned and operated by the citizens of the community.

Only public education has those goals as its North Star. Read more here.

Click here to share what YOU believe about public education in this short survey!

By design, we often don’t know the identities of these groups’ major funders, but they have significant ties to major school privatization proponents, such as billionaires Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos. Many of these dark money anti-public school groups and their affiliated Political Action Committees (PACs) also have close ties to GOP operatives...

In Virginia, their playbook relied on spreading disinformation about LGBTQ students, using “parental rights” language to promote a right-wing candidate, and creating the appearance that they represent mainstream sentiment while exclusively amplifying right-wing claims. 

In 2022, right-wing operatives have targeted other states...manufacturing outrage over “parental rights” (even as GOP legislators seek to prevent Americans from deciding if or when they become parents), these right-wing groups and their political allies are focused on getting voters to the polls. 

As they expand their efforts in 2022, here’s what parents and the press need to know." Download the Disinformation playbook pdf targeting public schools here.

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