**NEW** Report on the State of Public Education in the Americas-May 2010

Access full report and updates from the regions and sectors of the IDEA Network here: http://www.idea-network.ca/ideas/english/news.cfm?pagenumber=10

Testing, testing, testing... forum evaluates standardized testing
On February 19-21, 2009, researchers and student's and teachers' organization representatives from 13 countries of the Americas met in Mexico City to analyse the impact of standardised evaluation on public education and to share strategies of resistance and alternative evaluation methodologies consistent with democratic and process oriented education. View the doments generated by the Testing, Testing, Testing...conference here: http://www.idea-network.ca/ideas/english/research.cfm?pagenumber=3

What do we mean by "Quality Education?"
In the Context of the III Americas Social Forum, representatives of teacher and student organizations and other groups that promote public education from 20 countries of the Americas met in Guatemala City October 8-10, 2008 to develop strategies for achieving public education systems that truly respond to the needs and aspirations of the peoples of the Americas.

Read the declaration from the Forum for a Quality Public Education inthe Americas here: ideas/admin/UserFiles/File/FSA_Ed_Forum_Declaration.pdf

View the program of the Forum for Quality Public Education in the Americas here: userfiles/image/file/Education%20Forum%20Program%20-%20FSA%20-%20Eng.pdf

IDEA:
Defending Public Education is International

 The struggle to defend public education as a social right is an ongoing and historic one that does not end with the obtaining of specific demands. It transcends national borders and requires broad social alliances that go beyond the sectoral interests of education workers’ unions, parents groups and student organizations.

With the increased privatization of public education resulting from the neo-liberal policies that have accompanied the imposition of globalization since the 1990s, this struggle to defend free, quality public education for our peoples has become more important and is a challenge for all who believe that public education is critical to the development of our countries and the construction of democratic societies.

For more than 15 years, we have seen the privatization of education advance in all our countries, leading to a deterioration of education in public schools, the reduction of access for low-income citizens, the segmentation of education systems, the illegitimate use of public funds to subsidize private education, and the elimination of labour and union rights for education workers. In the 1990s, large corporations and collaborating governments began to expand neoliberal policies beyond programs of structural adjustment to include a second generation of policies aimed at privatizing everything public, in particular depriving the majority of people of their social rights to health, education and housing.

In this context, education unions in Canada, Mexico,Argentina,Peru,Ecuador, the Caribbean and Central America decided in 1998 to initiate a process to build a network for public education in the Americas

The roots of the Network lay in the five years of experience of the Trinational Coalition in Defence of Public Education founded by academics and education-sector unionists from the US, Canada and Mexico in response to the impact of NAFTA on education in the three countries. We were aware at the time that the impending threat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) would make it necessary to expand the work to include organizations from across the hemisphere.We also knew it was important to include student representation and social organizations working with parents. Although we recognized the existence of regional and continent-wide educator organizations in the Americas, there was no organization that went beyond labour concerns and had as its specific objective the defence of public education and the creation of alternatives for improving its quality.