Page Title

By Public Policy Chair

Marilyn Treiman

halamari1@juno.com

Text Box: AAUW 2009-11 Public Policy Program Available Online
The 2009-11 Public Policy Program, which was adopted at the AAUW National Convention in June, can now be viewed online. Many of the changes represent recommendations from state public policy chairs. Other changes were made to make the program read more smoothly. The Public Policy Principles for Action were reordered to reflect the order in the Biennial Action Priorities. No positions were removed, and added as an amendment from the floor is a bullet to the Biennial Action Priorities that states, "To guarantee equality, individual rights, and social justice for a diverse society, AAUW advocates...Freedom in definition of family and guarantee of civil rights in all family structures." The AAUW Public Policy Program establishes the federal action priorities on which AAUW members

Text Box: across the country focus their advocacy efforts and guides the work of the national staff. New Public Policy Program brochures will be available next month and will be announced when they are ready. States Plan to Draft Common Education Standards Forty-six states and the District of Columbia announced Monday that they planned to create a system of common educational benchmarks and evaluations, a significant step toward the standardization of K-12 education in the United States, the Washington Post reported. The decision was made in order to combat inaccurate and unaccountable measurements of student progress due to the differences among individual state tests. "This is the beginning of a new day for education in our country," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. "A lot of hard work is ahead of us.

Text Box: But this is a huge step in a direction that would have been unimaginable just a year or two ago." Texas, South Carolina, Alaska, and Missouri are the only states that have yet to agree to the cooperative led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Though standards have yet to be created, the overarching goal will focus more closely on rapidly increasing standards for math, science, and reading, rather than on providing more accurate and precise measurements of student achievement. According to Education Week, the goal is to have standards for college- and career-readiness-those things students should know by the time they graduate from high school-ready for review in July, with grade-by-grade standards ready by December.