While public school parents/families bear the brunt of corporate education reform, our voices are too often drowned out by well-funded astroturf groups and politicians pandering to their donors' pet causes. This session will demonstrate how Parents Across America (PAA) helps connect, equip and empower parents to more effectively address the national privatization agenda as well as their local struggles, producing a stronger national voice of progressive parents to counter the false narratives about parent "choice." By sharing stories and strategies, we hope to encourage parents and others to keep fighting, and to model the ways we learn from each other and are able to put that knowledge to work. In the first half of the session, PAA leader/presenters will briefly share some of their recent challenges and successes fighting corporate reform, and touch on some of the PAA and other resources and strategies they use. There will be time for questions and answers. In the second half of the session, we will ask attendees to sit at tables with others from their state or region. Additional PAA leader will lead each table in a discussion of shared concerns and ideas for ways we can better support each other locally and have a stronger national voice, capturing action ideas on butcher paper. We'll end with a brief report out time focused on sharing any big ideas that got people excited.

Including illusory benefits of ed teach with specific examples on how the ed tech lobby distorts and/or obscures negative research findings.